


Okay, Computer

by beetle



Series: No Alarms (And No Surprises, Please) [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Attempted Murder, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Attempted Sexual Assault, Awkward Romance, Body Worship, Canon-Typical Violence, Crucifixion, DanCulta?, Danse Takes everything the WRONG way, Divergent Timelines, Dom/sub, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Failboats, Failboats In Love, Feels, Hopeful Ending, Humanity, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Kissing, M/M, Murder, OK Computer, One-sided Vulpes Inculta/Courier, One-sided Vulpes Inculta/Preston Garvey, Opposites Attract, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Post Fallout 4, Post-Canon, Post-Fallout: New Vegas, Radiohead, Rimming, Rough Sex, Somehow they rescue each other, Switching, Vulpes Gets in his Own Way, Vulpes Inculta Being an Asshole, You Know Nothing Paladin Danse, dante's inferno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-08 20:28:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 33,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15251433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: TheCapital WastelandCommonwealth. It’s been one year since Sole Survivor, Nate Jordan, convinced Maxson to spare Danse’s life and simply banish him. Nate then left the Brotherhood of Steel over their draconian stances and many other reasons, including growing ideological differences. Former-Paladin Jordan has joined the Minutemen and risen quickly through the ranks to become General Garvey’s most trusted commander.But in the time that Nate’s been following his conscience and ambition, he hasn’t forgotten the man who gave him the foundations for his new life and purpose. In that spirit, he sends one of the best, most wily scouts in the Commonwealth to Listening Post Bravo with a message for Former-Paladin Danse.Of course, Nate’s closest friend and his most useful . . . frenemy finding each other irresistibly intriguing and magnetic isnotpart of Nate’s plan, right? Right?OR:“Danse is a depressed and paranoid android; Vulpes is a calculating, chem-addicted fox-rat; and Sole Survivor Nate Jordan is a notorious cheat at cards and many,manyother things. And everyone lives in theCapital WastelandCommonwealth. Let’s see where this goes.”





	1. AIRBAG

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ghostofshe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostofshe/gifts), [littleleotas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleleotas/gifts), [thegrumblingirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/gifts).



> Notes/Warnings: Set post-Fallout: New Vegas and post-Fallout 4, in 2291, with a tweaked and slightly rearranged timeline (obvious and not complicated). SPOILERS. Drug use and drug abuse. Explicit sexual situations while sober. Non-graphic violence and murder. Implied attempted non-con, attempted mutilation, and attempted murder. Implied past child abuse and torture.
> 
> Thirteen chapters, with twelve named for each song on the Radiohead album, _OK Computer,_ and a bonus thirteenth chapter, named for the fic, which is named for—but differently spelled from—the album. Also: Dante’s _Inferno_. Because I have facets.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Depression, loneliness, purposelessness, Raiders . . . and a meet-not-at-all-cute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Non-graphic violence and murder, mention of non-fatal injury.

**“In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark wood, where the straight way was lost.”—Dante Alighieri, _Inferno_**

* * *

 

Danse is scavenging around the less frequented outskirts of Brotherhood-patrolled territory—always with an ear out for his former-peers—when life as he’s recently known it changes forever.

 

His once-Brethren have so far been good enough to not destroy him, as they would any other synths found in their territory. But only so long as Danse keeps his profile low and doesn’t take more than the bare minimum needed to keep his power armor in adequate repair, and himself in the business of breathing and impersonating a human being called _Danse_.

 

He frequently wonders, in his unfortunately copious free-time, when the _real_ Danse had died . . . or if there’d ever _been_ a real Danse. And a real _Andy Cutler_. It’s a mystery Danse’s bare-vague memories are not helpful at solving. . . .

 

His recall of life back when he and Andy had just been two scavengers scrambling in the Capital Wasteland and Rivet City—before the Brotherhood, when they’d survived by watching each other’s back and had made that survival _worth it_ by telling tall-tales about futures they’d never see and pasts they might not have lived—is still crystalline. It _is_ his memory: what passes for the past of a machine that hadn’t been smart enough or observant enough to realize it wasn’t human and never had been.

 

It’s on this stubborn refusal to recognize and accept reality that Danse often blames his inability to strike out on his own and forge a new path for himself. It’s on his own surely-programmed nostalgia and need to cling to a past and memories that had been written into him, rather than earned, that he blames his weakness and insistence on being near the old life he finds familiar, purposeful, and honorable.

 

Even if that purpose—if that life—if _nothing_ has ever been truly his to own.

 

There is, however, one precious territory which Danse _absolutely_ refuses to cede: that of his oldest and best friend. For as long as the memory of Andy Ray Cutler survives to make Danse’s chest ache and creak and burn—with a sense of loneliness and loss and never-ending grief rivaled only by the loss of his humanity, and thence the Brotherhood— _Andy_ , at least will never be remembered as anything other than a human being. And a good one. An _honorable_ one.

 

Not that Danse . . . M7-97 . . . knows anything about honor. Not _truly_. For what can a machine know about the finer points of humanity? Of honor, nobility, love, altruism, self-sacrifice, bravery, loyalty, faith, and hope?

 

His rummaging through the remains of a pre-War aircraft, already slowed to a near-standstill, is halted entirely by the not-so-distant, very sudden sounds of a clash. There’s no pneumatic, mechanized _whoosh_ , as of power armor similar to his own—so, it’s not the Brotherhood—just the ringing of steel against steel, clarion-clear, and coming from the north.

 

Rummaging and ruminating forgotten—a barely-noticed flux coil, attached control-board, and capacitors dropped and forgotten forever because of the scattering and refocusing of his attention—Danse is moving toward the fracas almost silently, and at speed. Over the distant, metallic clangs and the immediate, soft, well-maintained noises of his power armor, he can hear swearing and terse grunts of exertion.

 

But it’s the startled cry of pain and frustration that makes him push his determination, body, and armor to their outermost limits. Exponentially picking up speed, he plows right through a young and sturdy tree that’s nearly half-again his height, and only moves faster, still. He crunches and crushes down a gradual incline and into a depression of skeletal, stunted old trees and more oddly hardy new ones. He leaves deep indents in the blighted mix of near-dead soil and gray-green scrub vegetation. But as he achieves his highest advisable rate of speed, he churns up sprays of broken gravel, jagged metal bits, shards of glass, splinters of wood— _and_ of plastic that will still be en route to their half-life if/when the Wasteland truly begins to recover from the War—and other generally dangerous rubbish.

 

 _Dangerous_ to anyone but a _mostly_ -ignored and mostly- _harmless_ synth with the sort of power armor other synths, Gunners, and Raiders—even the most desperate and chem-fried varieties of the latter—tend to take a kilometer-detour to avoid.

 

Green-brown-grey blurs around Danse and overcast shades of darkening gray lower and threaten above. He’s tuned out anything that isn’t potentially or already a threat. His senses have winnowed to and zeroed-in on the heavy, relative silence that suddenly falls in the wake of a final metallic clangor.

 

In that taut, expectant lacuna, which he knows can unambiguously separate a man’s life from his death, Danse puts on a final burst of speed. All soundlessness is utterly done as, with a terse, determined growl, he bursts out of the hopeless, half-dead little glade in less than two seconds. A near-silent lunge takes him _up_ , and immediately to the top of an up-thrust, rocky outcropping that’s at least four times as tall as Danse is when unarmored.

 

He lands with a muffled _whoomp_ , his laser-gun already drawn. His practiced eye travels the length of the barrel almost instantaneously, and only a half-second ahead of his fired shot.

 

In the second-half of that moment, of the three other people on the rocky outcropping who _aren’t_ Danse, two are on the ground. One has a cauterized hole in his chest and the haft of a well-made, western-style machete in his lifeless hand. The other is clutching at his side and blinking up at Danse with pale, dazed-pained eyes.

 

The third person—a Raider, like his dead colleague, but apparently one with more common sense than chems-on-the-brain, for a wonder—is little more than the dust his fleeing heels kick up as he scurries down the other, more gradual slope of the outcropping.

 

Striding nearer that slope, Danse watches down the barrel of his gun as the Raider and his dust-puffs disappear into another large tract of straggly-hardy trees a few dozen yards distant. Then, frowning, Danse rests a finger lightly on the safety as well as the trigger but engages neither. Nor does he holster the weapon.

 

“Mercy is always wasted on such addled profligates as these, Paladin,” a soft, modulated tenor notes from Danse’s right, all dismissal and disdain. Unhurried and unworried—unusually so—Danse shifts enough to view the injured man next to the cooling body of his aggressor. After a disapproving glance at the corpse, the rescued man waves a shaking, absent hand at it. Then his pale, intense gaze ticks back to Danse, keen and curious and unafraid. “Your . . . hesitation to back-shoot that marauding refuse will surely be thrown in your face, at some later date.”

 

Not-quite-frowning, Danse has never felt so certain that his inability to scare up an actual human expression—other than stoic irritation and discommode—even for outlandish situations should have been a _big_ clue to his lack of humanity. One of _many_ tip-offs, in hindsight, that he was nothing more than a computer coated in flesh and shoved into the run of humanity. A pawn for some confused, robotic purpose he’s just not machine _enough_ to divine or remember. . . .

 

The rescuee—still staring patiently and curiously up at Danse—clutches at his left side a little tighter, wincing and obviously suppressing a pained hiss. The motion and sound draws Danse back into the moment and, still sort-of-frowning, he studies the man in poker-faced silence, his gaze impassive out of sheer default.

 

Whoever the rescued man is, he looks to be built for speed and sabotage, just like Andy had been: sturdily muscular, but still rather compact, all told, under the faded-drab, reinforced scout-gear he’s wearing. The camo jacket that swims over his dark, many-pocketed flak-vest and rough-weave brown trousers, is just starting to show a spreading, bloody stain around the hand and fingers the man has pressed to his side.

 

On the ground to the injured man’s left, just far enough out of his reach that Danse could end him while he was still mid-lunge for it, is a western-style sniper-rifle, modded-out and pristine, but for a fine, recently-acquired layer of road-dust. The shoulder-strap attached to it looks almost homemade and Danse recognizes it as being Minutemen-issue. The rest of the supplies and garbage dotting the bare outcropping suggest a hasty camp for three . . . disturbed and half-tossed. Danse makes note of that and files it away for later consideration.

 

His gaze then ticks back to the rescuee’s tanned face and the man smiles distantly, his placid expression offering a boyishness and mischievousness that seems far too self-aware to be anything but an attempt to cozen. Perhaps, if not for the strain and pain around those pale eyes and the appearance of frazzled discombobulation given by a corona of grown-out, jet-dark fluff surrounding his foxlike face—perhaps, were Danse not used to marinating in his own loneliness and _alone-ness_ since just after Nate Jordan had convinced Elder Maxson to spare his life—he might have been taken in by this approachable front.

 

Not that Danse has ever really known what to do with friendliness or friendship since Andy’s death. Despite even Nate’s persistence and patience.

 

Giving the injured man a dour, warning look, Danse continues to make a point of not safetying or holstering his laser-gun as he backs slowly away from the small campsite.

 

He means to clomp back the way he’d come and try his best not to dwell-on the soon-to-be-increased threat and trouble from local Raiders, which will be a likely result of this ill-advised altruism. At best, other Raiders will surely come looking for vengeance or to build a reputation off ending the hermit-synth with the near-invincible power armor.

 

Other Raiders, still, will no doubt be coming for this injured scout—also likely to be a less-than-innocent party, even if he’s not a Raider—gazing so serenely up at Danse while slowly bleeding out.

 

Gritting his teeth, Danse nods tersely. “Safe journey to Diamond City—or wherever Garvey’s sending you.”

 

That boyish smile becomes knowing and almost reptilian in its dry satisfaction and infernal patience. But still, there’s weariness and stress around those wide, pale eyes.

 

“I am not bound for Diamond City, nor at the behest of _the_ _General_ ,” the injured scout emphasizes lightly, but pointedly, before going on: “I have come under the orders of Commander Nathaniel Jordan of the Minutemen. Formerly a Paladin of the Brotherhood of Steel.” Upon Danse’s slight but telling gape, that knowing smile turns sly, then bland, but without losing an ounce of smugness. “The commander sends greetings to, and requests the presence and forbearance of the Paladin known as _Danse . . . also_ formerly of the Brotherhood of Steel.”


	2. PARANOID ANDROID

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The not-long—but definitely _fraught_ —journey to Listening Post Bravo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Mentions of non-fatal, but bleeding injury. Self-loathing and many other _very_ human emotions. UST. Vague flirting and innuendo. Paladin Danse knows _nothing_.

**“I'm not alone in misery of soul.”**

**―Dante Alighieri**

* * *

 

 

The trek back to Listening Post Bravo is a long, slow slog.

 

By Danse’s armored side, the scout— _Corporal Fox_ . . . far too apt and obvious an appellation to be anything other than an alias—keeps up gingerly, but lightly, still clutching at his side and grimacing occasionally. Despite Danse’s considerately measured progress, the corporal shortly has trouble keeping up, his nimble, rather forceful stride becoming a heavy and faltering hobble. Danse can hear the whistle-wheeze of the other man’s labored breathing over the workings of the power armor.

 

That probably isn’t a good thing. At least not for _Corporal Fox_.

 

Pity-pangs aside, Danse holds his silence, and any instinctive and awkward attempts at comfort. He’d always been bad at such and knows—now, more than ever—that comfort isn’t anything like _aid_. Isn’t anything like _useful or productive_. And it certainly doesn’t give the illusion of such.

 

Comfort, in _Danse’s hands—_ the rote comfort of a machine—is _less_ than no comfort at all.

 

Danse would rather be seen as cold and unsympathetic—monstrous—than offer the sad joke of his empathy and compassion to the one living person who still matters. Even if that pathetic, fumbling concern is offered to Paladin Jordan’s—to _Nate’s_ messenger-proxy.

 

“It is not necessary for you to slow your customary gait to cater to my injury,” Corporal Fox informs Danse in suppressed, breathless chuffs. When Danse glances over at him, the corporal’s face is shining with perspiration and pallid under his tan. The formerly fluffy-ish corona of his night-dark hair is now flatter with sweat, though not yet sodden.

 

Nate’s Militia-scout is far tougher than he appears: a bantam-weight scrapper, no doubt about that. And a hundred other less-than-noble, far-from-trustworthy things, besides. There’d been daggers and danger in those icy-intent eyes, and merry mayhem and murder behind that boyish smile, before the trek had begun taking its toll.

 

There’d been _the Devil, himself_ . . . not that Danse had ever believed in such or had familiarity with it before meeting Andy. _Andy_ had believed devoutly and done his best to “stay at least ten steps ahead of Ol’ Scratch.”

 

He would surely have had a thing or two to say about the company Danse finds himself keeping, today.

 

“I know it’s not necessary. But I choose to, anyway.” Danse slows his stride some more and doesn’t bother to hide it, ignoring the corporal’s prideful huff of offense. “Commander Jordan sent you with a message. I presume there’s more to it than simply an invitation to Sanctuary Hills?”

 

There’s no reply for so long, Danse glances over at Corporal Fox again and catches those flame-and-ice blue eyes studying him. The corporal’s full, mobile mouth is twitching in what might be a smirk but is probably a sneer. Either way, regardless of the Brotherhood’s wishes, it’s really no secret at all that one of their higher-ranked officers had been revealed to be a synth, barely one year ago. Cast out, but not killed, in a rare display of mercy from Elder Maxson, for past services rendered to the Brotherhood. Exiled on pain of death, but left to live without further censure, harassment, or threat thanks to the efforts of another Paladin. One who’d then walked away from the Brotherhood, as well, and joined the Minutemen in protecting the Commonwealth.

 

Even if Corporal Fox is only half as clever as his pointy-sharp-keen face suggests, he’d have to be far less clever than half to have not put two and two together.

 

Thus, smirk or sneer, the expression is likely not _kindly_ meant—and is, probably, meant as on-purpose needling. Or an attempt at superiority.

 

But the corporal’s intent, whatever it may be, doesn’t detract from the intriguing angles and features of his face, or the eerie-grave beauty of his intense gaze. Nor does that suspect intent deter Danse from avidly cataloguing those angles and features and eyes in hopes of solving them . . . then moving on.

 

“As we have already trekked so far to your camp, we may as well complete the journey. If only that I might deliver the Commander’s entire message in what passes for safety hereabouts.” The corporal’s amusement is now a thin and wheezing veneer. “Also, if you possess such supplies in surplus, I . . . would be indebted to you for antiseptic, gauze, and tape.”

 

Frowning rather deeply, now, Danse doesn’t risk another glance at Corporal Fox. It’s enough that he can feel the other man’s gaze on the right half of his face like something measured in too many rads to be at all safe. Once more, he slows his stalking stride, his face flushing and blanching, hot then cold.

 

 _To what purpose_ , he asks himself, and not entirely for the first time, _did the Institute make a machine that feels shame and chagrin? Fear and sadness? Why do I blush and why do I cry?_

 

“I’ll tend to your wounds, myself, once we get back to my camp,” Danse informs the watchful scout with grim firmness. “I probably have more experience at playing medic than you do.”

 

Corporal Fox huffs again, and this time, the amusement is genuine and generous. “While likely true, that is not much of a boast. I have not often been on the . . . tending side of wounds—either given or received.”

 

 _Danse_ is the one to huff, this time. “That, too, isn’t much of a boast.”

 

“Nor was it meant as one.”

 

The silence that settles between them is both stubborn and strangely not awkward. It only lifts when Listening Post Bravo is practically a stone’s throw away and the corporal is finally wounded and winded far enough past his obviously towering pride to stop.

 

He doesn’t announce a halt or ask for it, he simply _stops._ Ceases his hobbling-lurching along and bends forward slightly, one hand still clutching his wounded side—the bloodstain had long since stopped spreading—and the other braced on his left knee. Not only is that left hand tremoring, but the rest of him is shaking minutely, as well.

 

Danse clomps back toward his companion, who tries, fails, then gives up on shrugging off his streamlined pack and rifle. The machete, however, remains in the scabbard on his belt, utterly unreached-for. Danse is both disturbed by and approving of this. “I can carry you the rest of the way, if you wish,” he offers mildly, without any inflection that could be construed as insulting—or so he hopes. Corporal Fox takes a few slow, deep, controlled breaths and lets a final one out as a long, shuddering chuckle.

 

“Is it still that much further to your camp, then?”

 

Brow furrowing, Danse restrains himself from sighing, certain it’d be taken the wrong way. Even he, himself, isn’t certain which way he might mean such a sigh, in this moment. “We’re less than one-third of a kilometer from my camp. But I imagine Nate—Commander Jordan would be equally displeased if you died under my care as if you’d died on the road to me. Probably more so.”

 

The corporal chuckles again, slightly condescending but mostly wry. “Perhaps, if I were to die without at least the salient points of my message delivered, yes. Being thwarted is not something for which the commander has patience.”

 

“No, it’s not.” Danse is now fighting the telltale twitch of a fond smile. At least for a few moments, before his customarily grave and wall-like expression reasserts itself with ease. “So, can you make it the rest of the way without causing yourself further injury or damage? Carrying you now wouldn’t be an imposition, Corporal. But tending to you in the aftermath, both your worsened wounds _and_ the exhaustion brought about by you overextending yourself while in a compromised physical state, definitely would be.”

 

Corporal Fox’s striking blue eyes close and his face loses all affect. For nearly a minute, but for the occasional flutter of surprisingly long, dark lashes and the slight shift of his eyes behind pale lids, he’s utterly still, seeming not to even breathe while obviously controlling and mastering himself.

 

When his eyes open at last, ticking to Danse’s face, both candid and hooded, the scout smiles, all distant-absent irony. “How far I have strayed from youthful imaginings of upholstered palanquins, and peeled grapes hand-fed to me by adoring and strapping _vexillarii_ ,” he murmurs, more to himself than to Danse, who nonetheless hears, but doesn’t understand what the scout’s talking about.

 

Danse frowns, his brow furrowing again in displeasure. “I . . . don't get your references, Corporal.”

 

Fox smiles, smug and condescending once more, his ice-and-fire-and-knives eyes intent and assessing. “No, Paladin. You do not. Nor is it necessary that you do. Lead on, if you please. I shall endeavor to not hinder you any more than I already am.”

 

Perhaps it’s irritation and exasperation with the scout’s stubbornness that moves Danse. It’s certainly not anything he can reasonably attribute to his programming. By the time his logic, malfunctioning or not, plays catch-up with his actions, he’s closed the brief distance between himself and the corporal and scooped the startled man up.

 

He’s solid and firm in Danse’s armored arms and doesn’t flail, despite his obvious surprise. In fact, he wraps his right arm around Danse’s neck—or as high and far as he can reach, with Danse’s power armor in the way. The corporal’s left hand absently takes up the task of stanching the wound at his side.

 

This close—relatively speaking—Danse can parse the color of those pale eyes more exactly . . . not that there’s anything to parse. The plasma-blue of them is unleavened by flecks of any other color, and it doesn’t shade to some milder color near the pupil or the outer edge of the iris. The corporal’s wide eyes are slightly slanted at the outer corners, and almond-shaped. They give the impression of being narrowed and calculating, even though their wideness should convey innocence . . . or at least a callow sort of naivete.

 

His other facial features are as patrician and narrow as previously advertised. His tanned skin is slightly weathered, but not enough to dispel the air of dangerous puckishness that attends the man. That night-dark corona of damp hair framing his face does so without washing out that ocher complexion—though the scout’s acquiring a noticeable pallor under it.

 

The ironic and amused quirk of his mouth is, however, _very_ distracting to Danse and, once it has his attention, keeps the bulk of it for long enough that the scout notices. If the licking of those lips and the widening of his infernal and knowing smirk is any indication.

 

For long, breath-held moments, Danse’s attention and consideration tick from the bitten, desert-rose of the corporal’s curving lips, to the hyper-real blue of his eyes.

 

“If playing the part of beast-of-burden is your will, Paladin, I shall not fight it,” those strangely enthralling lips shape, with every motion, slight pucker, and twitch of them tugging and twinging, like fishhooks in Danse’s gut and balls. Or tunnels winnowing his focus down until all else beyond the corporal’s face, but especially his mouth—and eyes—is darkened periphery entirely unworthy of notice.

 

Simultaneously, the purring-insinuating softness of the corporal’s voice is like raw velvet run down every centimeter of Danse’s skin, and never mind the protective shielding of his bodysuit and power armor.

 

Somehow, Danse forces his gaze away from Corporal Fox’s mouth again and up slightly, to his eyes—jumps out of the frying pan and into the fire. Once more, he finds himself trapped in a metaphorical tar-pit he could never have seen coming before these moments of being mired in it.

 

“I . . . no longer have that rank. Nor have I ever deserved the honor of it, within the Brotherhood or outside of it. Commander Jordan has surely mentioned this to you when briefing you for this mission. As well as the . . . reasons why that’s so,” Danse sighs from numb, feckless lips that are rapidly succumbing to tingles and chills. Corporal Fox’s gaze is deep enough to drown in and hard enough to shatter himself upon. But he still can’t look away. Not when they’re so ill-advisedly close to each other. Not when the corporal’s earthy-astringent scent—like relatively clean sweat, tempered metal, and crushed juniper—is muffling, baffling, and confusing more of Danse’s senses than the olfactory. “You may simply call me _Danse_ , if you need to call me at all.

 

“In all candor, I had _not_ foreseen such a . . . _need. Danse_ ,” Corporal Fox adds with slight, but noticeable emphasis on three words in particular of his statement. His intent stare seems to _burn and freeze_ Danse, all at once: like the result of touching vulnerable skin to chilled metal, so that the cold of the latter and the heat-moisture of the former, bond both together. And the more chill leached from the metal and heat produced by the skin, the more intense and addictive the sharp-bright-hot temperature tug-of-war . . . and all attendant sensations.

 

That strange sense freezing-burning Danse from the inside out and back is further deepened by those three emphasized words. But it’s the word _need_ which rings and echoes throughout Danse’s jangled consciousness. It disorients him so profoundly, he doesn’t realize he’s started walking again until he tromps another innocent, half-grown sapling underfoot with his unfazed power armor.

 

He’s half-hard and finds both the state and knowledge of it taxing, undignified, and intolerable.

 

“Thankfully,” Corporal Fox murmurs, turning his discomfiting gaze to the way ahead of them, once more, “ _unforeseen_ is not synonymous with _unwelcome_ , for the nonce.”

 

Danse’s instant response to that low, mesmerizing—insinuating?—purr is to flush abominably and clutch the corporal tighter, all while noting with almost objective interest his body’s several confused, but distinct responses to the corporal’s voice, the corporal’s regard, and the corporal’s scent.

 

The final leg of their journey to Listening Post Bravo is unsurprisingly silent. And unfathomably charged.


	3. SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK ALIEN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the safety and security of Listening Post Bravo, Danse and his guest circle each other and sound each other out . . . like two animals with much sharper teeth and claws than even _they’ve_ both cultivated. Danse gets a crash-course in human emotion and sexual attraction, and Vulpes’s personal charm doesn’t really work in anyone’s favor. But his attempt at plain-speaking almost does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes/Warnings: Mentions of non-fatal, but bleeding injury. UST. _Much less vague flirting and innuendo._

**“Lost are we, and are only so far punished,**

**That without hope we live on in desire.”**

**―Dante Alighieri, _The Divine Comedy_**

* * *

 

Once at the outskirts of the abandoned Brotherhood Post, Danse pauses near the first sensor-wards to deactivate the first layer of timed traps.

 

He places the corporal on his own two feet carefully, noticing the slightly winded grunt as the man winces at some pain, but quickly straightens. The strain showing around his enthralling eyes and the tight set of his distracting mouth are greater tells than perhaps the corporal knows. As does the fact that he’s clutching his wounded left side with both hands by the time the outer sensor-wards power down for the triggered twenty-five seconds disarm-window.

 

Expressionless, but for a faint frown, Danse waves the grim and flagging scout on tersely. With another grunt, this one soundless, Corporal Fox shuffles ahead warily and stops instantly when Danse, right behind him, commands. When the wards behind Danse power back on seconds later, the ones ahead of the corporal by less than three feet, power down.

 

By the time they’re safely within the innermost tier, with three layers of sensor-wards buzzing just out of audible range behind them, Corporal Fox is smiling again, all wry bemusement and charmed whimsy. He eyes the camp with unreadable assessment, squinting a little into shadows. The overcast gray-white daylight—already faltering—barely seems to pierce the shade of rocky cul-de-sac walls and thick, verdant foliage overlaying the entire camp and shielding it from more distant viewers. Safer and more hidden than the Post’s bunker, which has long sat empty. It’s not too far distant . . . but Danse hasn’t set foot near the place for more than ten months.

 

Not since just after Nate had shown up, barely in time, and stopped Danse from. . . .

 

The camp is Spartan . . . if one’s criticism and judgment are uncommonly kind. _Spare_ if one chooses to dabble in light diplomacy.

 

But even Danse—neither uncommonly kind nor diplomatic, and certainly never one for acquiring material possessions that weren’t weapons, armor, or specifically useful to his survival—could see his camp through objective eyes. No obvious comforts, but for a thin bedroll and near-flat camping pillow. The tent Danse uses when the weather is inclement is neatly folded and out of the way, against the entrance to the rocky cul-de-sac. The deep firepit, which is nearer the entrance than the sheltered “back wall,” is ringed with scorched stones and meticulously barren.

 

In sorted sections nearer that back wall are salvage that needs tinkering to make it either useful to Danse or valuable to someone else. Closer to hand are pieces that are fixed or had been scavenged in working order, which he means to take as trade to some moving market, or other. Nearly lost among the ranks of items which need tinkering—kept running by an efficient power cell on a timer similar to the one for the sensor-wards—is a bulky, squat cold-chest containing the few perishable rations that Danse bothers to keep handy, as well as plenty of chilled and distilled water.

 

Not far from the cold-chest are two large, gray footlockers: one with canned and nonperishable sustenance and sundry necessities (ranging from duct-tape to minor medical equipment), and the other with Danse’s neatly put-away spare bodysuits, clothing, padding, and piecemeal, bullet-proof body armor.

 

Both footlockers and the cold-chest are, of course, code-locked.

 

“I find your utilitarian aesthetic—as well as your precautions and ingenuity—refreshing and a delight, Danse,” Corporal Fox says, turning that bemused-charmed smile back to Danse. Despite the way his breath huffs out in . . . relief—another emotion which programming, faulty or otherwise, can’t or won’t explain—Danse maintains his usual wall-like affect, and doesn’t reply. He simply divests himself of armor, helmet, and his dense padding with speed born of long habit, then puts the armor into standby, with the helmet on the right gauntlet.

 

As he further divests himself of small arms, streamlined melee weapons, and minor, less obvious bits of protective padding, he can feel the corporal’s eyes on him—assessing, as always, and keener than knives. When Danse is down to nothing but his fortified, dark-gray bodysuit and black boots, he turns to face the once more smirking scout.

 

Those ice-fire eyes give Danse several unhidden and unsparing once-overs, and he turns redder and redder. He’s outright scowling when Corporal Fox finally deigns to make eye-contact.

 

“The Commander did not see fit to inform me that you are so strikingly . . . tall,” the corporal eventually settles on, disingenuous and mocking and _still_ practically purring. Danse’s face feels as if it, too, now has its own power cell. He manages not to look away first, but the corporal doesn’t make it easy, all playful-dangerous eyes and playful-dangerous smirk. “Hmm. But then, I am of no particular rank or importance in his scheme. Nor is he one to wax poetical or gratuitous on the appearances of his allies. No matter how worth the waxing.”

 

Blinking and confused—uncertain whether the scout means his words as compliment, insult, mockery, or something else, entirely—Danse looks down at himself.  Frowns at his close-fitting and relatively clean bodysuit, then back over at the still amused corporal. “I’m not what’s considered tall for a . . . for a simulacrum made to imitate a man. I’m a negligible amount under two meters tall, which is taller than average, but not necessarily _tall_.”

 

The corporal grins at that: wide, white, and vulpine. Or, perhaps, lupine. Whichever, Danse feels, briefly, like a prey-animal caught in the sights of a powerful, well-fed, but always hungry predator.

 

“If I might enquire, Danse: at what age do your human memories begin? Fairly recently, would you say?” When Danse goes stiff and pale—shocked and glowering—Corporal Fox demurs, dropping his gaze to Danse’s chest. Both his eyes and mouth narrow, his affect instantly gone aloof and deferential. “I ask only because you are enchantingly naïve and endlessly intriguing in your earnest and unmitigated reactions to the world. And because of my own . . . unseemly, but assuredly common curiosity about the mysterious, fabled _Synth Paladin_ : the unwitting infiltrator and iconoclast . . . the quiet downfall of the Brotherhood-loyal.”

 

Danse’s face, formerly power cell-hot, is now grave-cold. As he continues to stare in shock—and yes, vague, unnameable fear—at the corporal, those pale eyes flicker and flash up at him for a moment, voracious and observant. Then the scout’s gaze is once more cast at the ground in decorous reverence that feels strangely ritualistic . . . or like the beginnings of the stylized pageantry favored by zealots or sequestered madmen.

 

“What are you insinuating, Corporal?” Danse asks through lips gone once-more-numb. His voice is little more than a harsh whisper.

 

“I insinuate nothing. _You_ are the Mechanical Man who survived the ire of the Brotherhood of Steel. Who not only saved the life of Commander Nathaniel Jordan, but somehow managed to earn the consideration, concern, fondness, and _respect_ of one of the most obdurate and spiteful contrarians I have ever had the unique experience of . . . weathering.” The corporal’s mouth—more of a tell than his eyes or voice—ticks a bit on the right side, neither up nor down. “Respect, even, beyond what such a stubborn, anti-authority troublemaker as the commander accords _General Garvey_ , atimes. My . . . curiosity, Paladin, surely does not surprise even _you_.”

 

Danse’s mouth had dropped open during this clarification and when the corporal falls silent, Danse still can’t close his mouth. Nor do relevant word-sounds come tumbling out until Danse’s racing pulse stops stumbling and starts staggering.

 

“You’re here to deliver a message to me from your superior, not to have your idle prurience satisfied, scout,” he informs the corporal in a cold, flat, but nonetheless flustered tone. Another silence falls between them: fragile, but seemingly unbreakable. And as the silence draws out, Corporal Fox’s brow furrows very gently and his eyes, curious beyond mockery or posturing, meet Danse’s with surprising candor and gravity. With an admiring _fierceness_ that’s not unshielded, so much as it's far too bright—almost _rad-count bright_ —for any shielding to leaven, in its certainty, zeal, and near-feverish reaching out.

 

The suggestive smile forming below those eyes is mild and merciless, ironic and unapologetic.

 

“You stand before me, the very Ideal of the masculine form—rendered flesh by . . . who knows, and for . . . who knows?—attired only in a bodysuit that cleaves closer to you than your skin, showcasing and highlighting the well-proportioned particulars of your form, from shoulders to thighs. You are wrapped ‘round in nobility and honor so obvious and engrained, _they_ are more your armor than the mechanized protection you have lately removed. Yet you suppose that it is my _prurience_ , such as it is, that looks to you for . . . satisfaction?” The Corporal’s smile widens, flickering from dangerous to charmed to somewhat rueful, his tone gone from mocking to musing. “This . . . lack of situational awareness, itself, speaks much to your relative youth, I suppose. Your enticing musculature and strength _quite_ aside.”

 

No longer gaping but clenching and gritting his teeth until his jaw aches at the hinges, Danse has to suddenly fight not to close the two meters of distance between them. It would, he knows, end with one of them injured. _More badly_ injured.

 

Or—

 

But Danse is used to mastering himself and overcoming— _subduing_ —his worst . . . programming. And so, he does. He forces the reactive tension and rage in his fists, and the thrumming, restlessness egging the rest of him on, to defuse and disperse. Lets all the willful, useless—confusing—instincts to lunge at the scout and _affect_ that affect leach out to the ends of his extremities and the topmost layer of his skin . . . then lets out a slow, steadying exhale.

 

 _Like draws like,_ Danse supposes bleakly. _If even Nate’s errand-boy wasn’t an insubordinate, smart-mouthed, clever-talking fox-rat, there’d be reason to suspect a conspiracy or a trap. As it is, this annoying, obnoxious guttersnipe could be Nate’s twin in more than one respect_.

 

So admitting, Danse also must admit to himself that, from his first experience with this personality-type—Andy Cutler—to its cagier, morally grayer, rather _aggressive_ version embodied by Nate Jordan, and straight through to _this_ vexing current iteration of it . . . that _he_ may not draw a like-type and may not even _be a type._ But he certainly _has a type_ —one that has held true across years and miles and possibly lives.

 

There has never been and possibly could never have been a _Danse_ without an Andy Cutler or a Nate Jordan as a human foil and comparison. As contrast and ultimately _definition_.

 

Apparently, _Danse_ , can’t even be a person without a _temporary_ human foil, such as this bewildering and taxing messenger. A man who is easily a hundred times cagier, grayer, and aggressive—though it’s well-disguised by a certain stilted, self-aware charm and dryly ironic camaraderie and deference—than even Nate had taken every opportunity to be. And which even quirky, but generous Andy had sometimes managed to exhibit.

 

Perhaps it’s not the type that’s the conundrum, but the . . . non-person drawing it.

 

Deflating suddenly and heavily, Danse approaches the scout and strides past him, noting the quick tense-release of the other man’s body and breathing as he does. He holds his own, so as not to be clouded or overwhelmed by that earthy-astringent, sweat-metal-juniper scent, and makes for the footlockers and the medical supplies within.

 

“Your mockery and disdain of a civilian no longer possessed of rank or recourse has been noted, Corporal Fox. Duly,” he says evenly, though his jaw aches and twinges, and his eyeballs and temples throb with a rush of blood. His breath seems to whistle and whoosh out of his nose.

 

“Believe that I mock you, if you must. If it eases and cools you to labor under that misconception, take my confessed admiration and interest as . . . quirks of a forward personality and evidence of rough manners. Or,” the scout continues, in a tone as modulated as Danse’s, yet taut with frustration and stress— _restraint_ —that makes Danse shiver as every hair on his body stands straight up. He no longer even remembers, for several moments, where he’d been headed, and pauses uncertainly. “Or, if you are of a more forgiving bent, you might simply accept that the admiration and interest are sincere, even if my injury is making me incautiously bold and . . . unsubtle.”

 

Glowering at the footlocker— _that’s_ where he’d been going: to get supplies to patch-up this smooth-talking little fox-rat Nate Jordan had lobbed in his direction like a human grenade—Danse shrugs and tells his hackles to _stand-down . . . for now_. “I’ve got plenty of antibiotics and stimpaks, which should take care of sanitizing and healing your wound, respectively. I’m . . . not well-fixed for painkillers, for which I apologize. But I have plenty of bullets you can bite, if needed.”

 

There’s a telling beat, laden with meaning and depth that Danse can’t read and might not have tried, even had he been he able. Then the corporal speaks in a voice that’s composed and mild, but for more hints of rueful wryness.

 

“I was raised to believe that pain, suffering, and misery can build and refine character. Rather, that bearing up under and overcoming them can,” he says, soft and deceptive as a silk-covered rat-trap, all honey-coated challenge and provocation. “Feel free to . . . _do your worst_ , as the saying goes.”

 

Danse shivers again and, a few moments later, is coding open the footlocker and kneeling. He stares at the contents with eyes that aren’t unseeing, merely uncomprehending.

 

Clearly some subroutine or other in the cyber-organic mess that constitutes his brain has gone . . . faulty. No matter: Danse has been drawn-out and taunted and led as much as he means to be by this scout. Best to just get the corporal ship-shape and on his way, once Nate’s message is delivered and Danse has composed a polite but firm reply.

 

“I neither agree nor disagree with that opinion and have no interest in discussing the matter.” Danse reaches for an object at random. Forcing and funneling his fly-away focus reveals that the object is, in fact, a stimpak. For a few seconds, he’d rather crush it in his grip than offer its healing and health to Corporal Fox. “Remove your jacket, flak-vest, and shirt, Corporal. Let’s get this over with as quickly as is advisable.”


	4. EXIT MUSIC (FOR A FILM)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Danse learns two new lessons and re-learns a tried-and-true old one:
> 
> 1\. Never turn your back on an injured and vulnerable Fox.
> 
> 2\. Even the Devil, himself, can look peaceful and pretty when he sleeps.
> 
> 3\. Distance and time will never be enough to stop Nate Jordan from utterly shaking up Danse’s— _everyone’s_ —comfortable paradigms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes/Warnings: Mentions of non-fatal but bleeding injury and tending to the injury. Hurt/comfort. Recreational drug use. Altered mental state. UST. Pining and yearning.

**“Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.”**

**―Dante Alighieri, _The Divine Comedy_**

* * *

 

Despite the persistent and lowering cloud-cover, it doesn’t rain for the remainder of the afternoon, nor early evening.

 

This fall has been an unusually dry one, considering the location and general climate. Danse worries idly, in the back of his mind, about brush-fires and such, and is very careful when using open flames or plasma tools. He always digs a pit—slightly deeper than the one for his evening fire but not nearly deep enough to constitute a sanitary latrine-pit—in the purposely bald patch at the center of Bravo Post, before working with an open flame or something that can spark.

 

Now, with blurry sunset and misty moonrise struggling for dominance behind the mash-up cloud-cover, Danse efficiently gets his evening fire going, then remains kneeling in front of it, his dry, dusty hands held to it for warmth he can feel but does not particularly appreciate at this moment.

 

To his left and back by three meters, sitting cross-legged on Danse’s bedroll and still—despite the advancing chill of evening and more than two hours since Danse had finished disinfecting, applying a stimpak to, and dressing the now accelerant-boosted injury—wearing nothing but his tough trousers, dog-tags, and gauze bandages, the corporal is staring absently off into the distance. Or was, the last time Danse had allowed himself to look at the man.

 

Neither of them has spoken or acknowledged the other since Danse had injected the stimpak near the shallow but still raw-looking machete-slash that ran from the ribs just under Corporal Fox’s left pectoral, to just above his taut-muscled abdomen.

 

Despite all the corporal’s tough talk about pain breeding character, he’d inhaled sharply as Danse had pressed the syringe to the skin of his right side, just below the gaping and sluggishly droozling wound.

 

Frowning with annoyance and impatience, Danse had stayed his hand and its forward momentum as he’d glanced up at the corporal. Only to see the man’s eyes had been tightly shut, his nostrils flared, and his face pale.

 

“Easy, Corporal,” Danse’d found himself commanding in a firm, but gentle voice he’d once used on Brotherhood recruits, subordinates, and civilians—including Scribe Haylen . . . and _more than once_ on Nate, who’d been and likely still was incredibly accident-, trouble-, and tragedy-prone—and other personnel who’d been wounded on the field.

 

Corporal Fox’s pale eyes had opened at once, wary and questioning. Danse had merely held that gaze, letting the other man study and read him for as long as necessary. Which had been about one minute, before the corporal had nodded once, clearly steeling himself for the injection.

 

And once it had been done, with the corporal’s soft hiss still fading from the air between them, Danse had brushed feather-light, sure fingers along the trajectory of the sanitized, visibly closing slash, but a safe inch below it.

 

“Stimpak syringes are always the most painful—too large and long. _No one_ likes them,” he’d felt the need to reassure Corporal Fox. “Just another necessary evil, I suppose. But you did alright. You’ll be okay.”

 

“You . . . are disarmingly kind when least expected or deserved, Paladin,” Corporal Fox had replied, his voice almost ragged with breathlessness. He’d opened his eyes once more, meeting Danse’s almost commiserating gaze. The corporal’s resulting smile had been slow and tired and trembling. Strangely defeated and disappointed—but not, it was obvious, with Danse. “Would that a phobia regarding large needles or a lack of constitution for negligible pains was all that troubled and dogged me.” That tired smile had faltered and fled, leaving a drained lack of expression and Corporal Fox’s gaze had shifted to the distance where it would remain for at least two hours. “But thank you. You are . . . a compassionate man.”

 

“I’m neither.” With a truncated caress that’d ended in a sudden jerking away, Danse had left off brushing the corporal’s soft, damp skin. Had left off mapping faded scars with fingertips that were entirely too close to reverent for his peace of mind. He’d stood and gone about consolidating used med supplies and trash, then tidying up.

 

He’d drawn-out said pointless puttering until the overcast light of day had begun to fail . . . and burn in its failure. As the clouds had been consumed by the fiery-orange light of sunset, Danse had collected most of the last of his stockpiled tinder and small logs—barely replenished, since the early and clement spring—and got about the business of building a fire.

 

Now, when the flames relinquish their hold on Danse’s walk-about mind, he stands once more and faces the corporal. Those pale eyes reflect the orange-gold firelight almost violently, flickering and flaring as if mirroring some turmoil behind them. But the pupils holding court in the center are rather fat, as if even the bright light of the fire and fading sunset aren’t enough for them to see to their satisfaction.

 

“How’s the wound?” Danse asks, and the corporal frowns but wrests his attention from whatever horizon his mind has been chasing. Several long-lashed blinks later and he’s gazing up at Danse with wide, solemn eyes.

 

“Healing,” the corporal says in a strangely dreamy voice, then glances down at his bandage-wrapped torso. He lifts his hand as if to brush the spot over his wound, but then doesn’t. He lets his hand settle on his knee and sighs, looking up at Danse again with urgent-sincere eyes. “I am indebted to your concern and care.”

 

“Accepting basic decency from another human bei—from me, doesn’t make you indebted. Nor me a saint. And anyway, you can’t deliver Nate’s message if you’re dead of septic shock. I’m no altruist.” Danse approaches the corporal slowly, unwillingly fascinated and drawn by the co-opting of his bedroll by a body that isn’t his own.

 

The corporal doesn’t look right in Danse’s bedding or territory, but he doesn’t look wrong, either. It’s vaguely baffling. And irritating in a way Danse can easily mark but not so easily categorize and label.

 

When Danse stops before the once-more-drifting and distracted corporal, he stands over the other man until he begins to feel ridiculous—no less so for standing with his arms akimbo. Crossing them over his chest also feels odd and idiotic for some reason and, with an impatient huff, Danse hunkers down before the corporal, his left knee next to his big, right boot in the dead dirt.

 

This close, despite the myriad scents of evening—mostly green ones, and the faint-rank under-scent of various wild animals and rodents . . . thankfully none of the large and dangerous ones—Danse can smell the corporal. He still smells of sweat and juniper and metal. Only, the metallic scent has merged with the now-fading copper tang of the recently sealed wound.

 

Danse finds himself staring at the corporal’s bandaged ribs, sides, and the upper-half of his taut abdomen. In the reflected light of the fire, his skin—naturally olive-toned, in the way of someone who tans rather than burns, but whose skin nevertheless doesn’t see much sun—is a mesmerizing burnished ecru. Certainly not the sort of near-sickly, fishbelly-white of Danse’s skin, which has spent the last decade-plus in bodysuits and power armor, whether outdoors or not.

 

The definition of the corporal’s torso, shoulders, and arms is indeed that: _defined_. But gently, too: not all edges and lumps of chem-fueled physique. What Nate had been known to call “slab-sheets of ludicrous rage-muscle,” when speaking of Gunners, mutants, and even some Paladins.

 

No, Corporal Fox is toned, and rather exquisitely proportionate to his compact height and frame, as of some old statue from a couple thousand years before the War. Like . . . _art_. A masterpiece that had been loved and labored over, perfected and polished . . . and now, has come to life. . . .

 

. . . and apparently signed on as a scout and messenger for the Commonwealth.

 

Snorting, Danse lets his gaze wander at will, tracing lines and shadows, dips and curves. And wherever his gaze lands and lingers is a bemusing delight to eyes that only dimly remember the pleasure they’d once experienced while looking at another human body.

 

Rather . . . _while looking at . . ._ a _human body_.

 

Danse only becomes aware that he’s boring holes into the corporal’s collarbone with his gaze and grinding his teeth slowly, but intently, when the corporal clears his throat. His chuckle is amused and not-quite-discreet, then he takes a deep, steadying breath as if he’s about to speak. Half-hesitant, Danse meets that winter-fire, pupils-huge gaze, and it’s like being submerged in plasma. Bathed in heat so intense, it scorches the psyche and senses, without obliterating the flesh containing them. He only absently notes the first part of what the corporal then says.

 

“When I was twenty-two,” the scout muses, “I was discarded by my ideological brethren—stripped of the rank I’d earned and bought with horror and blood, then tossed away like refuse for my . . . failures. Rightly so, I must be honest. Scorned by the highest of us all. A man who . . . was soon to be dead, anyway. Upon my dismissal—not the death I had expected—I . . . was numbed to extant emotion. Other than disappointment, that is. Or, so I thought,” Corporal Fox adds, with more tantalizing and poignant flashes of that self-deprecating wryness and awareness.

 

His gaze falters, dropping to Danse’s knee, and his brow furrows slightly. His pale, articulate hands are still, but only barely, in his lap. His lips, as pale but fiercely orange-gold in the firelight as the rest of him, purse for a few moments before he sighs, soft and rueful. “It is the emptiest of emotions, disappointment. Void and pointless, serving no one at all. Driving one to cling to bottles and chems—to pasts that are a decade dead, and beyond even stubborn intractability. To the point of near-insanity, fostered by tangential turns of mind that also serve no one. _Disappointment_ , Paladin, is hope turned thwarted and useless. Hope itself is little more than determined delusion—a disengagement with objective reality. _Hope_ . . . is the child weeping that the world is not fair, as if the world had _ever been fair_ , but had stopped simply to spite that child. Hope . . . is idiotic conceit and an inexcusable misapprehension of reality.”

 

Now, Danse is _really frowning_. When the corporal doesn’t show further inclination to expand or expound, Danse shifts a little, leaning forward a bit, and the scout’s eyes drift up toward his face again. Now, the pupils of them have grown exponentially. They’ve nearly swallowed the orange-gold-pale of those chilly irises and the corporal . . . is smiling. Grimacing. _Something_. Whatever it is, it looks both dreamy and pained.

 

“When it comes at last . . . disappointment . . . is . . . incredibly disappointing. Disappointing to be so thoroughly disappointed, and disappointing that the disappointment, itself, is a self-indulgent, weak-sister, _pathetic_ . . . _feeling_.”

 

Danse can only blink. And frown. And be caught in that ice-and-flames, firelight-flickering gaze.

 

“One day, I shall grow wings, Paladin Danse. _I shall grow wings_ . . . and I will not be hysterical. I will not be useless. I will not be _lost_ . . .  I shall _fly_!” Despite the still-whimsical tone, the corporal’s loopy-huge, all-pupil eyes are solemn and earnest. Open and undefended, almost to the point of childlike innocence.

 

This unanticipated facet and filter-less speech is so disconcerting to Danse, he bites his bottom lip, then licks it, before clearing his throat quietly. “Ah, corporal, perhaps—”

 

“I never know until they collapse under me. The floors. They always . . . whenever I set my foot and my faith and my trust . . . it all collapses and falls out from under me. So, I must learn to fly. The floors will never hold. _Never_. Not for me. But . . . I know who I am. I always know. When _everything_ breaks, I know who I am, where I have been, and where I will always be. I will always be _falling_ , until I learn to fly. Falling down-floors. . . .” the corporal trails off, sad and pained and soft, with a damp shine spilling down his firelight-smudged cheeks. His eyes seem to be focused on Danse’s beard or mouth or chin.

 

Sighing heavily, Danse shakes his head then hangs it for a couple minutes.

 

“Do you even remember what chems you’ve ingested, corporal?” he eventually grits out. The corporal hums and chuckles, throaty and wistful. The sounds sends shivers rippling throughout Danse’s body: out, then in, then out, again.

 

“You ask as if that or anything else matters,” Corporal Fox chastises, gentle and eerily affectionate. Danse shakes his head again and looks up . . . just as the corporal’s eyes roll back in his head and he flops back to the bedroll. Unconscious and grinning like a miserable madman long-used to such a lunatic default-expression.

 

Even chem-crazy and chem-unconscious, the corporal commands Danse’s gaze and keeps it.

 

 _Danse’s gaze_ , at least, has the freedom to initiate tactility and express appreciation of that which it beholds.

 

“Hell, Nate,” he finally mutters some minutes later. He scowls at the deeply-breathing, serene, _troublesome_ scout . . . then reaches out to arrange the bedroll cover and a single blanket over him.

 

Danse supposes that he, himself, will be sleeping both rough and cold tonight—assuming he sleeps at all.

 

The fox-rat corporal, however, looks soft and ethereal in the flicker of firelight and glow of sunset, but at the same time . . . he also looks keen and _fierce_. The striking beauty of him is as close to peace as Danse has ever felt . . . _not_ in spite of that innate keenness and fierceness even while at rest.

 

 _Because_ of it.

 

“You always bring me nothing but trouble, Paladin Jordan. Even if you have to send it via proxy,” he tells Nate. Tells the fox-rat scout.

 

Tells the setting sun and the rising moon, for all the good it does.

 

Then, Danse falls silent. He eventually gives up on giving up this opportunity to stare openly at Corporal Fox, and simply lets his gaze take liberties and enjoy the familiarity his restless hands never will.


	5. LET DOWN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the morning after a night spent under a ton of chems, for Vulpes, and the morning after a night spent under his own futile feels and growing desires, for Danse. Nobody’s at their best or most discreet, but Nate’s message gets delivered, nonetheless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes/Warnings: Mentions of healing/healed injury. Mentions of physical assault. Mentions of recreational drug use and altered mental state. Implied situational prostitution. UST.

**“The devil is not as black as he is painted.”**

**―Dante Alighieri, _The Divine Comedy_**

* * *

 

The corporal’s breathing stays deep for most of the night, barring some hitches and soft groans when he shifts enough to disturb his still-healing side.

 

Danse alternately watches the fire and Corporal Fox, until well after the stars come out and evening becomes night. Then the witching hour. Then the true midnight of four a.m.

 

When that true midnight is leavened by almost-light and the lightening of the jeweler’s velvet-black overhead—when the fire has burned rather low from Danse’s apathy regarding and disinterest in moving to collect the rest of his tinder, and yet . . . Corporal Fox still seems, somehow, to _burn brightly_ by starlight and with his own icy-scorching-strange inner-light—Danse finally manages to turn his gaze away from nearby incandescence and to more distant wonders.

 

When dawn definitively touches the far-low horizon, the corporal speaks. His breathing had changed some minutes ago—from sleeping-slow-steady, to uneven-accelerating-awake—and Danse is not startled, nor does he even look over at the other man. His eyelids and eyes burn slightly, and both are dry from wind and staring into the distance.

 

“It was kind of you to cover me and insulate me from the chill,” the corporal says, his voice scratchy and chuffing into near-soundless whispers. Whispers that are barely louder than the shift of cloth as Corporal Fox sits up and shoves off the linens.

 

Danse focuses on far-away clouds with rose-gold underbellies. The vault above them is about seventy different gradients running the gamut between gold, coral, lavender, and deepening indigo. Beyond the indigo, twinkle the last few, determined stars.

 

“I . . . presume it was you who saw to it I did not spend the night exposed to the elements, such as they are,” the scout prods with momentary hesitance and uncertainty. “Though, I suppose pneumonia or sepsis would not make for efficacious delivery of the Commander’s message—for which, I imagine, you must be growing impatient.”

 

Danse does not respond, other than a grunt that could mean anything at all and in fact means nothing. He can hear the corporal let out a slow but frustrated breath, and before the other man can spin more charming, clever bullshit to distract or redirect, Danse finally speaks. “I’ll take that message, if you’re sober enough to deliver it accurately and coherently. If you aren’t, and it’s not urgent, then I’ll wait until your head’s cleared.”

 

The silence that results is longer than the last, and stiff and simmering with offense. “I assure you, I am fully capable and prepared to repeat the Commander’s message verbatim to you at any time, no matter my mental state. Commander Jordan is neither poet nor philosopher. And even the most compromised Raider in his deepest binge could remember five or six lines.”

 

“And is that what you are, then? Compromised and a Raider?” Danse finally glances back and over at the corporal, who’s slumped forward a bit. He’s holding his discarded, bloody shirt in his lap, which is still covered in most of Danse’s spare blankets.

 

(The corporal’s shivering and the chatter of his teeth in his sleep had begun to bother Danse earlier-on in the previous evening. He’d have covered the man in the bodysuit off his own back just to stop the constant, minute tremors and below-conscious-range sounds of enamel being worn off teeth.)

 

“I am no Raider,” Corporal Fox insists, still stiff and simmering, with flashing eyes and a grim affect. He’s haughty and offended, too. Danse snorts.

 

“No, you simply . . . what? Seduce them into playing nice to let you through their territory unscathed then manage to alienate them—or try to con them—only to wind up shivved and betrayed in the wilderness? Far from reliable allies and dependent on possibly nonexistent Samaritans to step in?” Now, Danse smiles—grim, but smug, too.

 

Meanwhile, the corporal grows paler, but for hectic red at either cheek and the bright, dawn-pink of both his ears. When he speaks, his tone remains stiff, despite its attempt at casual calm. “The plan was to trade with them for safe passage through their territory, into yours, yes. Then safe passage back. What _they_ wanted for what _I needed_.”

 

A flush of something red and achy-searing rushes through Danse’s entire body at light-speed, then settles in to kindle his gut, his blood, and his fists. His eyes feel as if they’re throbbing right out of their sockets and his brows lift, but even the high hoist of them doesn’t seem like commentary enough on the madness of such an idea when the group in question is chemmed-up _Raiders_. “That’s the stupidest damn plan I’ve ever heard and _definitely_ the craziest. And I used to be a sounding-board for _Nate Jordan’s_ plans.”

 

The corporal huffs. “The sanity and cleverness of the plan matters not, only its viability, and the ease and seamlessness of its execution,” he opines haughtily. Danse’s eyebrows lift a little higher, but that red, possessive-jealous rage cools a bit.

 

“Right. Stupidity and craziness aside, your plan was clearly viable. Water-tight and executed with seamless ease. Not a single crimp in that plan. Clearly.”

 

“They were marauders and profligates. _Betrayers_ and opportunists—carrion-birds. I knew to expect treachery from them. I was simply . . . caught at an off-guard moment,” the corporal insists with those pale-icy-hot eyes narrowed meanly. Danse rolls his eyes but doesn’t even ask. He knows at least two of the corporal’s Achilles’ heels and can guess at some others, but he supposes it doesn’t even matter how the Raiders got the drop on the scout, in the end.

 

“You were lucky to have made it so far still alive, and while in the company of Raiders,” he contents himself with saying, though he isn’t sure whether he means to Bravo Post specifically, or simply to whatever age the corporal is.

 

The expression on Corporal Fox’s narrow-knowing face says that he’s reading between Danse’s lines easily.

 

“I am not at all lucky, Paladin,” he settles on saying, serene and with vague malevolence. “Providence has never been on my side. Thankfully, I _am_ suspicious to the point of useful paranoia. And I am very, _very_ clever at surviving against daunting odds.”

 

“Like a rad-roach or rad-rat? Yes, I believe you.” Danse shakes his head again and turns back to the fire. To the dawn in the distance far beyond it. But then certainty and necessity lines his spine and churning-boiling gut with titanium alloy, and he looks back at the absently-smiling scout. “Something tells me your presence is far more trouble than I or even Nate supposed, Corporal. Perhaps you _should_ deliver your Commander’s message—regardless of the chems compromising your system—then go back to Sanctuary Hills. Or back to _wherever_ , so long as it’s away from here. And from me.”

 

The coolness of the corporal’s eyes is, to Danse, the night, itself. Yet the heat and glowing brightness of them, too, is the breaking of day—is _high noon_ , in some moments. Such as the current one. The corporal’s eyes seem to burn cold-hot in the aggressively advancing sunrise. When the corporal tilts his head a bit more toward the horizon, the ice-blue of his eyes is softened to a warmed, roseate-lilac. The feverish-intense-beautiful dawn makes the feverish-intense-beautiful corporal as deeply luminous as the atmosphere above and around them.

 

After a protracted stare-down that lasts either forever or about two and a half minutes, give or take a century, Corporal Fox’s gaze drops as his expression seems to quiver. He glares at his shirt while his mouth works soundlessly, then shuts, still twitching and quivering, occasionally.

 

Danse goes cold and all but holds his breath hoping the corporal doesn’t cry, as he had the previous evening. Even if silently. Danse’s own tears and feelings are nuisance enough without those of a broken, chemically-compromised fox-rat . . . no matter how compelling and magnetic that fox-rat can frequently be.

 

But the corporal takes a shallow breath, nods, and begins to laboriously, almost gingerly pull on his blood-soiled shirt. His motions aren’t graceless, but stiff and pained, as if his body is far older than his apparent twenty-five or thirty years.

 

“As you wish, Paladin,” Corporal Fox replies, modulated and indifferent. Danse can’t make out the other man’s expression from the downcast angle of his face and is glad of that. The corporal’s face without its subterfuges or smugness—without its _defenses_ —is not _anything_ Danse needs or wants. “Will you hear the message now, or do you wish to retrieve notation implements, first?”

 

Danse’s mouth purses. “Even a chem-compromised Raider can remember five or six lines, right? Tell me what Nate said, and if I need to make notes, you’ll just have to tell me twice.”

 

“Of course.” The corporal is all deference, not even looking up to smirk his wry-amused-smug-rueful smirk. Danse finds himself rather unwillingly shifting from his own tailor-style position to kneeling. He stretches out a few cricks and kinks then knee-walks closer to his occupied bedroll. Corporal Fox still doesn’t look up and he’s grabbed his flak-vest. Elegant, articulate— _restless_ —fingers fiddle with flaps and Velcro. With his head bowed, Danse can see that the corporal’s corona of night-dark hair is ruffled-flat and poking out every which way, like that of an ass-kicked rooster, all feathery hanks and fuzzy-waves.

 

For some reason, that makes Danse’s breath and heartrate hitch and stutter and fluster. Then, the corporal’s speaking—not his usual eerily perfect modulation, but _Nate’s_ raspy, bluff, blunt declarations. Nate’s broken-gravelly tenor. Nate’s inflections and emphases. Right down to that weird/old-fashioned way Nate has of hard-selling even intangibles—like liberty and justice and fairness—like a pre-War newsreel or a shady, used Brahmin-salesman, or something.

 

“Danse, buddy, I’ll cut right to the chase,” the corporal channels Nate Jordan to say: “I need you here. Not just because you’re my closest living friend and one of the few people I trust to the end of the world . . . which has obviously already happened. But because I need your skills as a leader, organizer, tactician, and instructor. I need _Brotherhood_ steel to put in the spines of damn-near every new-recruit marching under Garvey’s banner. And there’re dismayingly many, ever since shit shook out the way it did, last year. The ones not running for the Railroad or the hills head straight for us. And you, my friend, have more of that much-needed steel and conviction, tenacity and nobility— _honor and instinct for order_ —than anyone I’ve ever met.

 

“There’s a place here for you, if you’re getting tired of wasting away at Bravo Post. If you miss my chipper disposition and film-star good looks—as well as somehow always managing to beat my cheating ass at Hold ‘Em and Crazy Eights. There’s always a place for you, Danse.” Corporal Fox pauses in his recitation—imitation—of Nate Jordan at his . . . Nate Jordan-est. Then he goes on, completing his delivery of his commander’s message. “And the Minutemen need someone with your talent and ethical uprightness. Someone with your heart, purity, and unimpeachable conscience. Beyond trusting you with my life . . . I’d trust you with everyone else’s. Everyone. These recruits and the entire Commonwealth. Even . . . Shaun. Everyone worth protecting. _Everyone_. Please come to Sanctuary Hills. Come to where you’re needed and wanted and useful. To where your purpose and meaning can be remade. _Come home_ , Danse. In hope, Nate Jordan.”


	6. KARMA POLICE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danse confronts Vulpes regarding his chem use. He receives a polite, but definite flash of fox-rat teeth in response. As ever, it’s two steps forward, five steps to the side. But for the near future, Danse and Vulpes might be taking those lateral steps together. If only so Danse can return Nate’s impossible, fox-rat messenger to him in one slightly care-worn piece.
> 
>  
> 
> **Last of the Danse’s POV chapters for a bit. After this, it’s Vulpes’s POV through the second-to-last chapter.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes/Warnings: Mentions of healing/healed injury. Mentions of recreational drug use and confrontation about possible drug abuse. Aftermath of altered mental state. UST.

**“This mountain is so formed that it is always wearisome when one begins the ascent, but becomes easier the higher one climbs.”**

**―Dante Alighieri, _Purgatorio_**

* * *

 

Though he’d looked away from the corporal’s blank-absent affect while he’d recited Nate’s message—in a way that had made _verbatim_ look like the laziest paraphrasing—Danse can still feel the shift and return of Corporal Fox’s assessing, measuring, smoldering gaze. It’s disconcertingly keen and hot on him, like direct sunlight or a ray of moonlight. Or a perhaps something more of a rad-hazard than distant stars and satellites. Perhaps like the impact of a detonated nuke while one stands in the ground-zero blast-radius.

 

Or perhaps something more precise and narrowed: laser-like and personal, like the mad, mesmerizing stare of a riled rad-snake.

 

 _Something_.

 

“Your recall, if accurate, is impressive in its fidelity. As is your imitation of Commander Jordan’s . . . manner,” Danse finally says. Because he has to say something to avoid looking as flustered as he feels in the wake of this sneaky-clever, disturbing fox-rat suddenly, briefly—but _powerfully_ —channeling Danse’s only remaining friend and confidant.

 

He's surprised into looking back at the corporal when the man chuckles, small and for some reason rueful.

 

“I remember everything.” The scout’s voice is utterly without inflection, as if he’s now channeling a machine. Something less human than a synth—or even one of those old, pre-War Mister Handys. But when he goes on, that lack of inflection lessens, and humanity leaches back in. “Commander Jordan chose me for this very reason, Paladin. Because I am possessed of, as he says, an . . . _eye-deading memory_ —a term with which I was not familiar, nor was the commander interested in clarifying—and that mine is the most . . . detail-oriented recall he has ever come across. The commander’s actual words were rather less complimentary and more rambling, however. But I am able to repeat his thoughts on that matter verbatim, as well, should you wish. That particular exchange was . . . neither privileged nor private,” Corporal Fox adds with an elegantly dismissive shrug. Rather, it’s meant to be, but it turns into a twitch and shudder . . . then the slight sagging of the corporal’s shoulders. Without his flak-vest and jacket to pad them, they don’t seem as broad, but somehow twice as strong.

 

Danse bemusedly entertains and restrains an instant and intense desire to place his hands on those shoulders—to hold them tight, as if to steady and reassure and claim. To feel and gauge the strength and fortitude of them. To then, perhaps, pull the corporal closer, until his night-chilled and night-tempered sweat-metal-juniper scent is the very air Danse breathes. . . .

 

And to then, _perhaps_ , pull the corporal closest of all, and gaze down into those dawn-glowing, thousand-rads eyes, and—

 

“What did you take last night and when did you take it, corporal?” Danse grits, directing his willful attention away from Corporal Fox’s dusky-pink lips. They look soft, full, and not at all chapped, unlike Danse’s, and the longer he directs his regard at the quandary those lips present, the more he wants to test that softness, fullness, and not-chapped-ness with his own lips.

 

The pointed beat that follows Danse’s question—which he hadn’t meant to ask and hadn’t _known_ he’d ask when clamoring for something to shatter his own distraction—says that Corporal Fox hadn’t been expecting that response. And that he had been deliberating over his answer, and over whether he’d bother answering at all.

 

“The chem of which I partook yesterday evening was a . . . tincture of my own devising, consisting overwhelmingly of Jet as a primary base, along with a secondary admixture of seven parts sedative. Another of my tinctures but tweaked to be more . . . potent and fast-acting,” Corporal Fox’s eyes dart up from his flak-focused fingers to Danse’s beard, once more. Or his mouth. The corporal’s own mouth curves in a secretive smile. “Hmm. And three parts Drif’d cut with concentrated Psycho, then diluted with distilled saline. Plus, some rather precise processing times and conditions. I ingested the chem while you spent over an hour laying out the evening fire. I could have mixed a fresh batch for myself in _that_ time, had I the ingredients at hand. Such was your . . . preoccupation.”

 

Danse flushes as he realizes that the previous evening’s _preoccupation_ had also been due to the corporal’s continued presence.

 

“Does Nate or your General know about your chemist and self-testing habits?”

 

The corporal’s smile is as facile and slithery—as _meaningless and venomous_ —as that of a fleetingly, but suspiciously quiescent cobra. “My use of chems is no secret among my direct superiors and the General. I have gone to no pains to hide it nor have I lied regarding it. Commander Jordan orders me to check in with medics frequently regarding my physical and mental health. The former is admirably close to peak, I have been informed. The latter . . . is composed enough to perform my duties and tasks without incident or accident, provided I maintain my current regulation of the habit. Or regulate it more strictly, of course.”

 

“Of course.” Danse shakes his head and sighs. “Do either of them or your medics know the frequency of your use, and the strength and dosages you prefer?”

 

That snake-smile is holding steady, bland and disquieting as the rigor-rictus of a corpse that’d died insane . . . and maybe also relieved. “If they do, the matter has not been discussed with me.”

 

“Which means they have no idea that you’ve gone beyond using chems and into abusing them.”

 

 _Now_ , that slithery-slick smile falters. Just by a tremble and twitch, at first. Then it _falls_ , like the floors Corporal Fox had rambled about in his chem-delirium last night.

 

“I cannot control nor have I any interest in controlling or mitigating the opinion of me you seem to have formed. However, if the name of the game you choose to play now, is _laying each other barer than absolute necessity demands_ . . . then, _do_ inform me when it is _my_ turn to callously attack you with _my_ suppositions, assumptions, and observations.” The smile widens again, but it’s no longer facile or slithery, meaningless or venomous. _This smile_ means many things: danger, spite, cruelty, more than a few hints of murder. And it is very, very cold. “I shall endeavor to hold up my end of the game so that _neither of us_ grow bored with our play, Paladin Danse.”

 

Taken aback with guilt, chagrin, and mortification—and no small amount of apprehension—Danse is quickly recalled to the corporal’s purpose in his camp. In his _life_. And that purpose is Nate Jordan, never mind this corporal’s chem-habits and situational lack-of-ethics. Never mind anything at all about the scheming-seething little snake.

 

Commander Jordan— _Nathaniel Jordan, Paladin, BoS, (Ret.)_ —and his tempting, nothing-everything offer to uproot what passes for his life in these post-human days, to follow a barely-leashed fox-rat to Sanctuary Hills, is the matter of the moment. To be a part of the Commonwealth and its aims. To be a part of an ideology, again . . . and a people.

 

A torture, for certain, as Danse, himself, is not a person at all, and may never have been. He’s merely a clever and perhaps pathetic form of automaton, with no illusions about its humanity, or lack thereof.

 

What point, then, rejoining a humanity he’d never been part of, despite his own delusions of it? What point _anything_ , other than his working plan of “get the fox-rat corporal _gone_ ”? Gone, and back to Nate with whatever answer results in Danse being left alone, as he had been for nearly a year, now. . . .

 

He starts a little when the corporal moves decisively—starts putting on his flak-vest. Soon enough, the corporal is wearing both that and his jacket once more—with few winces and grimaces, considering his still-healing side—and staring down at his empty, elegant, work-roughened hands. But the silence between them stretches out, uncomfortably expectant and almost desperate—and when the corporal finally looks up at Danse, Danse turns away before that intent-hopeful gaze can snare his own.

 

“Do you wish me to convey a particular sort of refusal to Commander Jordan, regarding his request? Down to your tone and inflection?” the scout asks in that mild-modulated voice, as light and negligent as a spring breeze. But the brittle accommodation in his voice doesn’t incline Danse to believe that lightness or negligence. So, he, too, stares down at the corporal’s hands.

 

Then he quickly glances away when he starts wondering what those callused fingertips might feel like brushing along his cheek. And along . . . other places.

 

“Or . . . shall I, Paladin Danse, simply return to the Commander with a firm and final _no_?”

 

The implied disapproval and disappointment—and even a slight _woundedness_ —in Corporal Fox’s tone makes Danse sigh. He neither knows nor wants to know what expression is on that keen-clever face, now. So, he busies himself with standing and dusting off his knees. He’s halfway to his stash of nonperishables when the corporal tacks on another suspiciously inflection-free option. “Perhaps, you wish to think further on the matter in peace . . . in which case, I can make my own camp some distance away, and await your chosen reply.”

 

Danse kneels before his footlocker and codes it open. Stares at cans and shrink-wrappings of edible sustenance—mostly in complex concentrate- or ration-form. His stash is almost entirely uniform grays, olives, and browns . . . and that’s not limited to just the packaging.

 

Not-quite-meals for a not-quite-man.

 

Blinking until his blurring-trembling vision clears and stills, Danse finally grabs a can of something with a smiling animal on it. The label is worn, so he can’t be sure. But he thinks it might be some sort of Brahmin. Though if it is, the coloration is certainly a bit off.

 

“I’ll need until sunrise, tomorrow, corporal,” he says, and his voice isn’t unsteady, but it _is_ small and cowed-sounding.

                                                        

“As you say, Paladin. I shall return then for your reply.” The _corporal’s voice_ is even and deferential. Danse glances half-over his shoulder, only enough to see the corporal is standing. Danse hadn’t even heard the whisper-shift of coarse, sturdy cloth as he’d done so, and that’s . . . unnerving.

 

“If you think I’m letting Nate Jordan’s pet fox-rat out of my sight, to wander around a lawless territory unprotected—either tripping my traps and wards or getting captured and sold by Raiders—you’re fortunately mistaken.” Danse turns back to his nonperishables, his voice gone firmer and stronger—as yielding as tempered steel. He drops the mystery-can back in among its confederates with a dull-full _clunk_. “You’re staying right here until sunrise tomorrow, Corporal Fox. And then, we’ll _both_ take my reply to Sanctuary Hills and Commander Jordan.”


	7. FITTER HAPPIER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vulpes Inculta’s slightly-altered backstory and memories of the Courier, interwoven with his present situation, i.e., tired, injured, and tortuously turned-on—and alone—in Danse’s bedroll. Or . . . he’s alone and turned-on until desire forces him to take some initiative, since Danse clearly isn’t going to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes/Warnings: Not-quite-masturbation. Mentions of healing/healed injury. Implied/briefly alluded-to kidnapping of a child. Implied/briefly alluded-to child torture/physical abuse/sexual abuse. Heavily implied mental/emotional abuse and brainwashing. Implied prostitution. Mention of implied threat to an animal. Amorality. Mentions of the Courier and of Caesar. Mentions of murder and violence (non-graphic). Mentions of deep male supremacist tenets and dogma within Caesar's Legion. Issues with sexuality and sexual identity. Hero worship. Intense sexual attraction and musings. Definite Dom/sub overtones. Willingness to surrender power and control.

**“My course is set for an uncharted sea.”**

**―Dante Alighieri, _Inferno_**

* * *

 

Corporal P. Victor Fox of the Commonwealth’s Minutemen is, for the first time in nearly as many years as he is possessed of fingers, in a state of high anticipation and even higher anxiety because of it.

 

His offer of assistance at auditing and packing firmly turned down, Fox has graciously kept himself out of the grimly distracted Paladin’s way for most of the day. Has kept silent and unobtrusive.

 

Now, curled up once more in the spare softness of the Paladin’s bedroll, his eyes are closed, but not with the intention of feigning sleep. He doubts he’d fool the Paladin and doesn’t see the point of trying. Knowing himself, however, he has no doubts that he’ll truly drift off shortly, carried away into dreams by the Paladin’s scent: whatever synthetic fabric his bodysuits and bedroll are made from; petroleum-based fuel; and the Paladin, himself . . . smoke, sweat, and skin.

 

Really, it’s that final three that Fox finds most . . . compelling. Enthralling. It’s the scent of the Paladin’s skin and sweat that are wrapped around Fox’s buzzing-roused-hungry mind. The way the scent of smoke from the firepit and many others have woven and combined until they are as much a part of the Paladin’s scent as the others: something salty-ephemeral, as of some tame-thing gone wild, yet still longing to be tamed once more. As of a sharp-musky spice that might be used to enhance the savory or the sweet—cardamom or something. Dark as the good Earth below them, as anodyne as ozone and the sky above.

 

As soft-patient-eternal as the distant greenery that surrounds and shields them. . . .

 

Burying his face in the flat camp-pillow, Fox smiles, inhales deeply, and could testify he’s caught a whiff of the Paladin’s dreams from that pillow, and never mind the absence of its owner. What such a man, a _synthetic_ man—though Fox, having had limited experience with such to his knowledge, is far from learned on what exactly makes a man synthetic—must dream engages his fancy in ways little has since his previous incarnation, as one of Caesar’s frumentarii.

 

He cannot imagine, and that is one of many things that intrigues and pleases him. The Paladin is, perhaps because of his not-quite-human status, endlessly surprising and captivating. Fox cannot imagine what such a marvelous, man-made man must dream, but he _can_ imagine that the dreams must be extraordinary, in their grandiosity or joyousness, rage or despair. Or perhaps, there’s some other emotional theme regulating the Paladin’s sleep of which Fox could never conceive.

 

The thought only thrills him more. Makes him squirm in the Paladin’s bedroll around his healing injury and insistent erection, engulfed as he is in the scent of a man possessed of surely mighty desires and august goals. Engulfed in the heady-overwhelming-exciting scent of musk and metal—masculinity and machines.

 

Fox sighs softly, one hand cupped protectively, if not quellingly, around ache and arousal that have bedeviled him for most of the day, since dawn. Before he’d mastered himself—relatively—having his eyes shut had resulted in vivid images of himself kneeling before the Paladin, submitting to whatever desires and needs hid behind that stoic, unmoved affect and those old-soul dark eyes. Eyes deeper and kinder than forgiveness or mercy, but which are always leavened by deep sorrow and regret. And poorly-hidden by patently obvious, near-robotic impassiveness.

 

Such weights had rarely been attractive to Fox in either of his After-lives. As a Legionary and eventually one of the frumentarii, he’d taken his occasional lovers from those of lateral rank, or near-to. Or had simply submitted to the not-infrequent interests of useful, older superiors with a taste for young, eager-hungry soldiers. Unlike many of his peers, _he_ had not minded the mutual benefits to both parties . . . benefits that went beyond sexual liaisons. Just as his superiors had used their power and leverage to get what they desired from him, so he had used his youth, willingness—acting skills—and varied libido to get what _he’d_ desired.

 

Whether or not he then _kept_ what he’d earned had been down to him, and more often than not, he had. Everything he’d ever had, he’d bargained hard and fought hard for. Though some of the _fights_ had been more enjoyable than others.

 

Thus, _Fox’s_ instinct—his enjoyment and need and _obsession with_ —for submitting to the will and ambitions, and the desires and ideologies of powerful men is a pattern and hallmark of his life in the Legion; even of those first months immediately After . . . when the Legion had taken him from his first life.

 

From his earliest memories of a Legionary’s life—when those memories had finally stopped being red-tinged and wallpapered with blood and screams and sobbing—pleasing powerful men, whatever that entailed, had always meant greater and more for himself. Greater rations, more freedoms. More available pleasures and idylls at which to spend his occasional free time. Even, in later years, better training, armor, and arms. Better assignments. Promotions, too, though even those won with skills . . . _other_ than his impressive martial and tactical ones had seen him accomplish more than expected and beyond what his predecessors had achieved. At an earlier age, too.

 

Before his nineteenth year, Fox—known then as _Vulpes Inculta_ , though there’d been one other name, before that, the one he’d taught himself early-on to **never ever say or hear or think not ever** —had overseen the entirety of Caesar’s frumentarii: the Legion’s spies, scouts, infiltrators, saboteurs, and . . . fulfillers of other duties, as needed. Clandestine, bloody, and beyond.

 

That life of honor and purpose—of war and privilege—had come to a sudden end before Vulpes’s twenty-third year, with the advent of an admirably, lamentably wily Courier who’d managed to outfox “Mr. Fox,” outfox Mr. House and associates, outfox _Caesar_. . . .

 

Outfox them _all_.

 

And had she chosen—had she set her sights on it—the Legion could have been remade in her image and honor. Could have flourished fascinatingly under so wily and clever and ruthless a _queen_ —and she had, indeed, been more of those things, in the end, than Caesar, and thus worthier to claim a Legion and crown and throne that constantly demanded fresh blood of its occupant.

 

The Courier had _not_ chosen to restructure the Legion, however. With Lanius—the only Legate under whom the Legion _might_ have rallied without the sort of in-fighting that had torn it to pieces—dead at her hand and decorating a cross, her sights had grown and traveled farther west. Through New Vegas, to be sure: The Gateway to New California. And beyond that. . . .

 

The last Vulpes Inculta had heard of the Courier’s exploits before his own long journey east, had been the complete takeover and restructuring of New Vegas’s power _and_ financial flows. Along with this revitalization of the corrupt and ancient Metropolis, a darker, more practical and ruthless sort of promise had also been kept. One the Courier—brilliant, often merciless, and quite possibly mad—had never made a secret ambition. Yet her plans had been executed with startling efficacy and seemingly utter radio silence.

 

One day, not long after a newly-renovated and paved arterial avenue in New Vegas had been completed—less than one year into her dynamic reign—the metal poles had appeared to line it. A dozen of them—and that had been merely to start.

 

While New Vegas had still been scratching its collective head, bemused at its new autocrat, actual heads had begun adorning the spiked tops of the poles, soon after. Her defeated enemies, so it was rightly presumed. With staggered frequency, notorious heads had appeared on the tall, alloy _pikes_ , not poles. They had clearly, in the aftermath, been fashioned for nothing else.

 

Along the locally-dubbed “Examples Mile,” were the preserved heads of the Courier’s most iconic nemeses: Benny, the one who’d ushered her into her second life; Mr. House and his various loyal and less than loyal followers for sundry obvious reasons. And Caesar, of course, as well as many, many others, in the fullness of time.

 

The only identifying marker or sign given along the entire unnamed arterial had been, to all reports, single, deeply-graven plaques of hammered-flat, weathered pyrite. Two placed facing each other in the center of each street of the avenue, to throw their tarnished flickers unexpectedly into unprotected eyes.

 

 ** _Vae Victis_** they had been said to read, with no translation tendered or needed.

 

It hadn’t taken a former-frumentarius and his attendant education to know _Woe to the Vanquished_ , when he heard, and eventually saw it.

 

Such history and promise had been the Courier’s name, motto, greeting, and rallying cry since shortly after she’d been raised from the dead. Even the shallow earth in which she’d been buried had feared her determination and ruthlessness—had feared the diamond-hard resilience, tenacity, and madness midwifed into being by a bullet—too much to do anything but spit the Courier _right back out_.

 

 _Vulpes_ had owed his life, such as it was, to her rare and random mercy. Her pity, perhaps. Though, it likely hadn’t been that . . . for the Courier’s solution to everything—vengeance, pity, paranoia, fear—was to put the subject in the dirt. Or on a pyre.

 

Or a pike.

 

Had she pitied Vulpes _truly_ , she'd have simply cut his throat or eviscerated him, then had the carcass disposed of. No slow, tortuous death-by-crucifixion—not for those to whom the Courier granted her mercy. On the day Vulpes had earned the Courier's pity, well before that day's end, he would have been nothing but floating ash.

 

From their first meeting, in the remains of Nipton, through Vulpes presenting her with the Mark of Caesar, to the end of her alliance with the Legion, and—perhaps providentially—the end of Vulpes’s Legion-days as a direct result, he’d always felt a strange sort of . . . edgy ease around her.

 

The term _kindred spirit_ had been one Vulpes had heard with some frequency, especially in pursuit of spying missions. He’d never thought there might be heft to such a concept, until meeting the Courier.

 

No, not until meeting for the second time, this odd, intriguing person: the only person to murder one of Caesar’s own commanders, _in the presence of the Son of Mars, himself_. The first to not only live to tell that tale—she hadn’t, for reasons she’d never gone on to explain . . . though the story and her fame had spread, nonetheless—but to have gained Caesar’s respect with her fearlessness and audacity. And, to a vague extent, his distant, but almost fatherly affection.

 

The arrogance and idiotic gall of one of Caesar’s middling centurions—displayed as the Courier was leaving her first meeting with Caesar and his commanders—in idly remarking anything to her without Caesar’s leave had been . . . ill-advised.

 

Remarking thus on the Courier’s war-dog as “potentially fine headwear, if perhaps a bit long in the tooth,” with a barely-hidden sneer had been in dangerously poor taste, to put it mildly.

 

Centurion Hereditus’s sudden, violent death had been of his own making and none other’s.

 

After the shocked gasps of most of Caesar’s praetorians and centurions, there’d been no few stifled snickers and iffy clearings of throats. As Hereditus had flailed and twitched and clutched at his neck, the Courier, having collapsed the commander’s trachea with a single, gauntleted throat-jab, had evinced neither curiosity nor remorse regarding his impending death. She’d glanced away as if bored beyond disinterest, eyes going first to her unruffled, attentive war-dog.

 

The so-called _Wild Child of the Mojave_ ’s flat affect had cracked just the tiniest bit as she’d looked at the dog . . . then sealed seamlessly, and so fast even Vulpes had often doubted the accuracy of his memory ever-after.

 

She hadn’t even been breathing hard from such a quick-brief summoning of power, skill, and control—hadn’t watched the commander gasp and chuff out the last of his life. She’d simply turned to face Caesar once more, bowed with deference and respect, then straightened, never once breaking her eye-contact with the leader of the Legion.

 

“No disrespect, sir. But nobody threatens Cheyenne then don’t get made an example of.” Her dark, shark-still eyes hadn’t flashed and hadn’t shifted their almost plastic imitation of life. But Vulpes had known—with that kindred spirit-sense—that just under her copper-adobe skin, the Courier had been seething. Maintaining her control in a way she hadn’t expected to need, but was managing, nonetheless. Her rough, hard fists hadn’t been clenched, but the entire rest of her long, stocky body _had been_.

 

“Can’t let bullies and assholes be about their business or they’ll _always_ be about it. And about you,” the Courier had added grimly. But other than a there-and-gone tick at the right corner of her mouth, her expression had remained composed and blank. But still, somehow, fierce. “Not that you need _me_ sermonizin’ to know that. But if self-defense is a crime ‘round here, I guess’m for the noose or the cross, then. But better one big death than a thousand small ones.”

 

Caesar’s face—also masklike and difficult to read usually—had been on the cusp of surprise and disbelief since the Courier had dropped Hereditus. But as the Courier had spoken, it’d smoothly regained its saturnine watchfulness, leavened only with a little amusement that hadn’t quite been condescending, and flickers of consideration and burgeoning respect.

 

And everyone in attendance had been breath-held for Caesar’s verdict. Even the war-dog— _Cheyenne_ —had sat silent and patient at her mistress’s side, her canny, canine gaze darting from her mistress, to Caesar.

 

“Your assessment of my commander was not off the mark, Courier. Though rash, your response to his dishonorable statement was laudably decisive and brave. Loyal to your ethos and to . . . one under your protection.” Caesar’s gaze had gone to the unfazed dog and his slight smile had widened with what had appeared to be bemusement. “Your fierceness and devotion to even the least of beings under your aegis speaks well of you. Or perhaps it does not. We shall see. In the meantime, may your road be straight, and may Providence guide your feet. _Vale_.”

 

The Courier’s eyes _had_ flickered, there-and-gone, at that. Then, she’d bowed again, deeply, her right fist pressed to her left chest. Her dead-black hair had stood in a corona of messy spikes created by sweat, dirt, restless fingers, and long travel. But her wind-and-dust rasped tenor had been firm and sincere.

 

“ _Vale, Dominus_.”

 

As the Courier had resumed her departure from Caesar’s presence, war-dog at her heels, the whispers had begun flying about her. Not the least of which was speculation about the facility of that final, gracious bit of manners and protocol; about her temperamental reaction to Hereditus’s comment; about her rough-hewn courage and conviction in not trying to talk her way out of Legion justice; about her martial prowess and poise—remarkable in a man, and unheard-of in a _woman_.

 

About her undeniable guilt, and the resulting clemency for committing a _crime against Caesar, while in front of Caesar_.

 

Truly, the Courier’s mix of principle and ruthlessness, bravado and craftiness, and the favor of blind, beautiful Providence had been quite thrilling and attractive to Vulpes and to others, despite her sex and its myriad attendant frailties. He’d never before been drawn to a woman prior to the Courier or since—and had never, in the face of her utter disinterest in any potential lover, tried to woo her, himself—nor had he been _sexually_ attracted to the Courier. Not exactly. And he’d come to doubt she had been, at that point, attracted to _anyone_. Vulpes had witnessed multiple failed overtures to win her attraction and affection from men, women, and everyone in between.

 

Had she expressed even a passing curiosity about Vulpes, he’d have happily indulged at least once. Their genders and sexualities aside, it might have been . . . interesting. And certainly unforgettable. Also . . . inevitably a source of endless trouble in many, many ways, as with all of life’s most interesting and worthwhile entanglements. . . .

 

Now, however, _Corporal Fox’s_ faded attraction to the Courier—whatever it had been, at heart—is of little moment, as is his rather fanciful, romantic, years-long admiration and vague yearning for General Garvey. For the idea of an ideal man both of literal and figurative beauty, principle, and strength.

 

For here, now, poking about in his gear and junk with desultory dissatisfaction—clad only a bodysuit that leaves absolutely nothing to Fox’s vivid and detailed imagination—is a man who attracts and fascinates, and peaks the fires of admiration while powerfully stoking the fires of unadulterated lust.

 

From the instant Fox had first laid eyes on Paladin Danse, he’d felt the slow, deep burn of unremitting lust more powerfully than he’d ever before experienced. Mere minutes beyond the not unexpected betrayal by his chem-fried, dissolute Raider-guides—dead-eyed, identical twin brothers, possessed of seemingly indiscriminate sexual voracity and who’d insisted on sharing _everything and everyone_ —who’d taken a disturbing interest in knife-play that Fox had _not_ shared, the advent of the Paladin had been both rescue and doom. For that moment had marked Fox’s accelerating descent into an obsessive madness even beyond his usual capacity for such.

 

It had made in-comparison-whimsical preoccupations with the Courier, General Garvey—and in odd, very occasional moments, Commander Jordan—seem quaint, indeed. They are now mere embers that have flared under Fox’s skin with varying intensities and notable heat.

 

Paladin Danse is a _perpetua inferos_ —one that changes only in the magnitude of its burning, but not _consuming_ fire.

 

Though, Fox is, truly, _consumed, now._ By even the idea of this man, let alone the reality of him. By the scent of him lingering in fabric and the relative nearness of him. By the hope that, in the brief time that they’ll be traveling together, he will find favor with the Paladin and that that favor will see them share whatever pleasures they might agree upon.

 

Fox is not so proud that he wouldn’t settle for being on his knees before the Paladin, his throat being stretched and used by a formidable prick. The outlines of which Fox has only seen covertly, eyed as attentively as the Paladin’s bodysuit and his occasionally wandering focus have allowed.

 

Fox stifles a moan and imagines himself kneeling, or even prostrate before the Paladin, the subject of his regard. Joyous prey to the weighty consideration of that poignant, sorrowing gaze, gone glazed with lust and abandon. With the sort of want that’s really _need_ , and which burns in the balls and blood, marrow and soul.

 

On the wings of this scorching hope, Fox drifts off to the only dreamland left him, outside the aid of various chems. A demesne of utter darkness and phantom touches . . . of the Paladin’s safe-right-everything scent and that even-toned voice turned rough and harsh with desire and dominance. . . .

 

When, finally, he awakens, it’s to the same erection become more persistent and _insistent_. Surrounded by the same scent to which he’d fallen asleep: _The Paladin’s scent_ , of skin-sweat-metal-smoke. But the scent of smoke is ascendant—heaviest of all. Without even opening his eyes, Fox knows that it’s evening again, but early. He can still feel the last heat of the day just beginning to fade. The cool of dusk has settled gently and restfully on the outside of his eyelids, like a sentinel against the brash, uncouth sunset.

 

Smiling, once more, Fox burrows as deep as he can into the Paladin’s bedding and pillow, slowly and lightly putting medium pressure on his undiminished erection through the fabric of his sturdy trousers. The area around the zipper and button is damp to the touch, unsurprisingly.

 

Finally, with a soundless sigh and a last, lingering press, Fox leaves off his teasing and opens his eyes. Twilight is approaching full-swing, and the Paladin’s campfire is roaring cheerily. He must have gone for more tinder while Fox had slept. That the Paladin is a substantial man, but stealthy and graceful, makes Fox smirk and his aching prick ache even more.

 

A glance around the clearing shows the Paladin, once again in nothing but his dark-gray bodysuit and big, black boots, sitting on one of his footlockers—the one nearest to Fox—slumped forward and to his right, and rather deeply asleep.

 

Fox sits up quietly, pushing off the Paladin’s bedding without a sound. He’s similarly soundless all the way to his feet and across the yards separating him from the sleeping man.

 

For long minutes, Fox stares down at the Paladin. Seemingly about to topple over to the ground, his pouty-serious face is braced on his right fist, and his right elbow is braced on his right knee. He looks both young and vulnerable—like a sad and tired child grown too exhausted to stay up late, or to be watchful and wary. Even with the neatly-kept beard, his face is so naked without that stoic affect . . . pale and smudged and relaxed. His mouth is a solemn, gentle line, spare and pink and kissable. His lashes are a stubby-inky fan on his cheeks. And though his cares have fallen away a bit, the furrows and lines in his high, clear brow seem to be permanently etched. His thick, umber-dark hair is sticking out every which way, pin-straight and with no visible strands of gray.

 

Fox downwardly revises his assessment of Danse’s apparent physical age from close to forty, to perhaps barely older than himself.

 

Not so suddenly, he wants to cup the Paladin’s face in his palms and run the pads of his thumbs from temples to cheeks. He wants to brush across that innocently austere mouth and trace endless outlines around it with his fingertips. Wants to press his own mouth to the Paladin’s and share air and warmth. To share wet, urgent, ravenous kisses that speak more of fever than of finesse. To feel that mouth everywhere on his body, devouring and shameless and enrapt. . . .

 

With a soft, desperate, uncontrolled moan, Fox folds instinctively to his knees before the sleeping Paladin, his eyes fluttering shut before the sight of the man pushes his need to levels that rival his common sense and propriety. Though, at this point, even Fox’s many and varied chems for soothing and smoothing one’s mind and body would only serve to demolish his inhibitions, such as they are, all the faster.

 

And they’re already hanging on by a mere thread.

 

Focused on self-control and on quelling the lion’s roar of needy near-agony spreading outward from the unhelpful, entitled profligate between his legs, he doesn’t see the Paladin awaken. But he senses it—hears the shift of breath and slight gasp of startlement. Though Fox doesn’t open his eyes for the next minute, the Paladin doesn’t move beyond his initial surprise . . . not even to move away. His regard, however, is heavy and wary, shaken and incredulous.

 

Before he finally speaks, he draws a slow steady breath. Fox shivers simply from the anticipation of the Paladin’s voice—like an aural caress.

 

“What are you doing, corporal?”


	8. ELECTIONEERING

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little honesty plus a lot of attraction equals the enthusiastic pressing-together of erogenous zones and fun-times with body-worship.
> 
> **Basically, this chapter and the five after it are all Explicit/NC-17/NSFW.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes/Warnings: Initiation of sexual activity and oral sex. Sexual negotiations (of a sort) and related confessions. Dom/sub overtones. Willingness to surrender power and control.

**“Beauty awakens the soul to act.”**

**―Dante Alighieri**

* * *

 

 

The Paladin’s enquiry is calm, without inflection or even an interrogative lilt. Shivering again, Fox doesn’t open his eyes. He shuffles closer, head slightly bowed, until he can sense the strong brackets of the Paladin’s thighs to either side of him. He settles back on his heels, head still bowed as that of a chastened penitent. He can hear the Paladin’s breath catch on a startled-fast inhale, then feels it come whooshing back out shakily, followed by a near-soundless groan.

 

Fox draws in a deep breath, himself, tilts his face up slightly, and opens his eyes and his mouth. He means to say something, though whatever it is, it’s instantly lost as he makes eye-contact with the Paladin. _His_ eyes are darker than the night, but the reflected flicker of the nearby campfire makes them seem to smolder and burn.

 

The brief tick of that heated, intent gaze to Fox’s mouth, then back to his eyes, however, suggests that perhaps not all the smoldering and burning is borrowed from the campfire.

 

A pointed glance down at the Paladin’s fly—visibly distended, even in the few minutes since his waking, and now with a rapidly growing wet patch—confirms that assessment.

 

Despite the needy itch in his hands, the dry-void feeling in his mouth and throat, and the DNA-coded instinct to submit to whatever the Paladin would have of him—even if the Paladin were to ask him to leave and never return—Fox lets another instinct take over. He is certain of nothing in this moment, but that if he follows the right cues and takes the right actions, a future in which he can place himself under this man in all the ways he wants and needs, and would die or kill to _have_ , may be more likely to come to pass.

 

Indeed, the Paladin’s arousal is growing more obvious—as is the wet spot on his bodysuit—as Fox stares and hungers.

 

“Corporal,” the Paladin starts in a voice as choked and scared and dismayed as any insubordinate officer caught in the act. Fox cannot help nor hide his smile, or the fondness that warms it and him in his entirety. As he continues to gaze up into the Paladin’s sleep-young face, so boyish in its uncertainty and shock, Fox’s smile widens.

 

“On your feet, please, Paladin,” he says, and the Paladin’s brows shoot up. But otherwise, he doesn’t even twitch, let alone obey. That won’t do—won’t get either of them anywhere they _should_ be. Fox’s smile fades and his eyes narrow. He summons the long-gone ghost of a frumentarius who’d been feared and obeyed beyond question by most of the Legion, save Caesar’s Legates and Praetorians. “ _Stand up, Paladin Danse_. Preferably before I am forced to make a third request.”

 

It’s likely only the buried remains of an obedient soldier, as well as his fluster and shock that get the Paladin off his footlocker and to his feet faster than Fox’s next blink. But this is one gift horse Fox chooses not to look in the mouth.

 

Before the Paladin can move away or step behind the footlocker—or otherwise regain his rigid sense of propriety—Fox places his hands assertively on the man’s upper thighs. Without breaking their eye-contact, he sits up a little and leans in to press his cheek against the hot, hard line of the Paladin’s erection.

 

The reaction to this is a seismic tremor that moves through the Paladin like a wave . . . and not even a suggestion of resistance or displeasure leavens it.

 

The Paladin does not draw back even slightly. Not even after more than a minute has passed with them in their telling states and positions.

 

Finally, Fox sighs. It’s soft and long, with a relieved and pleased murmur riding the back of it. His hands—still on the Paladin’s solid thighs, but resting high and to the side, splayed practically across the tops and the Paladin’s hips—clench on firm, heated muscle. His fingertips dig in just enough to make the Paladin hiss and groan under his breath, which makes every inch of Fox’s untouched body _weep_ with desperation and the unfairness of wanting to be touched all over, when even that could never be touch-enough.

 

Fox inhales deeply, frustrated and thrilled, defeated and aroused by the scent of the Paladin—sweat-skin-metal—and of a new, dizzyingly overwhelming one, as well: musk and want, as powerful as a hammer-fall.

 

Nuzzling the length of the Paladin’s prick, which is standing almost at a ninety-degrees angle—Fox’s own has been there since shortly after the Paladin had spoken, or so it seems—he makes eye-contact again and smirks.

 

Then, he’s undoing the simple, Velcro-like fasteners of the bodysuit’s fly with motivated teeth and his clever tongue.

 

“Corporal . . . I . . . this—what—” the Paladin stammers huskily, in a voice that both bends and breaks. And, once again tellingly, he _does not_ halt Fox’s progress.

 

It isn’t long at all before they’re both staring at the Paladin’s erection, angry-red, leaking steadily, and still working on a true ninety-degrees angle.

 

Fox studies this prize with avaricious intent and unslakable appetite. Having seen his and several dozen other people’s fair shares of pricks, he’s quite certain the Paladin’s is uncommonly attractive. Longer than average by just enough to be interesting but not off-putting. Girthier than average by a deliciously intimidating margin because, of course, everything about the Paladin seems to be made to Fox’s most yearned-for specifications . . . even his prick.

 

Smirking up at the Paladin—who’s blushing so deeply, his face matches his gorgeous prick—Fox turns his face in toward it, toward the Paladin’s dark, straight pubic hair. The man’s dark eyes widen, and he looks so young and helpless, Fox is beginning to wonder if this near-legendary soldier is, in fact, _younger_ than him by a few years.

 

“You are truly magnificent, Danse . . . in _every_ way. But I _particularly_ anticipate relishing the lingering ache of you in my throat whenever I speak, over the next several days,” Fox murmurs on the heated-damp skin of the Paladin’s prick. Then he licks precome from his lips and grins up at the gaping man.

 

While the Paladin’s mouth continues to fruitlessly work for words or even relevant sounds, Fox inclines his entire body in and up toward the Paladin’s—power given over completely and joyously, and in a fashion even a naïf like the Paladin Danse couldn’t misinterpret.

 

Especially when Fox forsakes his grin for a steady, challenging gaze and suggestively parted lips.

 

The Paladin swallows visibly and finally finds his voice again, along with a glower and frown. “Corporal . . . I’m not a pair of chemmed-up Raiders. You don’t have to get on your knees or your stomach to keep me from betraying you or being an outright danger to your survival.”

 

Fox’s surprise is so great, he blinks, then huffs, a wry smile quirking his mouth. “I am a survivor. No matter what needs must be done to ensure that survival. My arrangement with the Raiders was not ideal, of course. But it was _necessary,_ until its premature end. I have no illusions about what transpired and had no hopes of any outcome other than survival and completing my mission.” With a slight shrug, Fox holds the Paladin’s gaze until the other man also sighs.

 

“So . . . you hope for something from _me_ —or from letting me have sex with you? You have a desired outcome in mind,” he clarifies in a voice as cold and hard as stones buried in permafrost. Fox’s brows lift gently.

 

“Laying with you _is_ my desired outcome, Paladin Danse. Have I not made this obvious?”

 

The Paladin flushes again, his heavy-dark gaze faltering as he draws in a long, shuddering breath. “Why? Why me? Did Nate really talk me up _that_ damn skillfully?”

 

Fox chuckles, a strange, deeply affectionate warmth spreading from his eyes to his brain, from his heart to his entire torso, and from his balls to his prick . . . and to every millimeter of his skin. Shivering, he leans in close again, whispering his words in a sinuous trail down from the crown of the Paladin’s erection, to the base. “The commander merely said he admired you and trusted you more than any other man alive. That . . . ‘Danse’s honor and integrity are iron-clad and unbreakable, even when they bring him nothing but heartache and fucking grief . . . and because of that, he’s the truest human being I’ve ever had the good fortune of calling _brother_.’”

 

By the time Fox completes his verbatim recitation of Commander Jordan’s words and manner, the Paladin’s eyes are wide and shining. Then he closes them, taking another deep breath, his shoulders slumping for a few moments . . . before squaring and firming. When he opens his eyes, the shine is lessened, but Fox can’t read what’s in them to be read. Not even when they lock on him, bright and keen.

 

“And Nate . . . he didn’t tell you to do . . . _this_?” he asks—brittle, but soft—then groans low and loud when Fox’s left hand slides in from his hip and down, cupping his balls and fondling them with increasing boldness and certainty as the Paladin’s hips shift in restrained proto-thrusts. “To get under my skin, and . . . entice me?”

 

“Is that what I am to you, Paladin? An enticement?” Fox asks playfully, only for the Paladin’s expression to harden and close off, even as he starts to pull away. Fox’s arms are quick to wrap around the Paladin’s hips and he holds on tighter than any lingering lees of his old Legionary pride could excuse or tolerate. It’s enough to make the Paladin pause and frown downward, even though he’s not looking right at Fox.

 

“Please, _Paladin. Please_.” Fox forces his embrace to slacken, and places his hands low on the Paladin’s hips, once more pressing heated, urgent words to heated, angry erection. “I am not on my knees before you to convince you of the rightness of accepting the commander’s invitation, nor am I on my knees before you in hopes of protection, or to stave-off betrayal. I am not on my knees to _beg you_ for the things we both clearly desire, and which you likely will not let either of us have. I am on my knees before you because that is where I wish to be and *need* to be. Where I belong. Nothing has ever felt so native to me as my place does at this moment. I am on my knees before you so that I might be allowed to _remain so_. As a supplicant before you.”

 

The Paladin’s eyes have been widening, his frown deepening. Now, both are turned on Fox. “I’m . . . confused. Your words—everything about you confounds and rattles me. Are you doing that on purpose?” His voice is shaky and raw . . . hungry in a way that Fox can, at last, pin down and label.

 

Though, even if he weren’t able to, the twitch of the Paladin’s hot, wet prick against his cheek would certainly inform him unequivocally.

 

“My intention is not to confuse or rattle you. And my rationale, at least, is quite simple, _Paaaaladin_ ,” Fox licks up Danse’s prick, slow and savoring, sinking into the taste and scent of him: synthetic, metallic, and—above all else— _human_. Intensely human. “I desire you _greatly_ , Danse. It is my . . . hope that you desire me, as well. That we both want you in me so deep that I am too full to make note of the fact that I cannot breathe . . . let alone able to care. And if not that, then I would ask of you only the continued kindness of allowing me this place: on my knees and at your feet, in supplication, satisfaction . . . and, always, hope.”

 

“Corporal—” the Paladin cuts himself off as Fox applies his teeth with exquisitely tortuous precision to the tip of his prick, while his tongue teases the welling slit. His left hand once more takes up its enjoyable task of fondling and squeezing the Paladin’s heavy balls, interspersing the actions with firm tugs that elicit soul-deep groans and thrusts that are no longer _proto_.

 

Fox hums happily around the head and top-third of the Paladin’s prick, smiles, then slowly, teasingly pulls off. He watches the Paladin pant for half a minute before grinning.

 

“Place your hands upon my head,” he commands, rough and shaking, himself. The Paladin blinks and holds up his hands, then stares at them as if he’s never seen them before. Then he turns that same look on Fox, who forsakes the Paladin’s balls and left hip for reaching up to grab those big, square hands. He pulls them to the top of his head and holds them there, until unsure, blunt fingers anchor loosely, then less so in Fox’s wavy fluff of sleep-matted hair. Fox first answers the questions in the Paladin’s eyes with a slow, approving smile, then an explanation. “Just so, Paladin. In the throes of pleasuring you, I may not hear your commands, but I will certainly feel them. Clenching in and tugging my hair, as well as guiding my motions, will come more naturally to you, I think, in moments of high arousal.”

 

So saying, Fox lets go of the Paladin’s hands and once again applies his mouth to the shining-red prick before him like a prize, or a treat. This time, he means not to tease, but to taste. And savor. And _take_.

 

He means to devour.


	9. CLIMBING UP THE WALLS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut. With feels. Alarming and almost unwilling—scarily mutual—feels. Alarming, almost-unwilling, and scary, _at first_ . . . but not for long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes/Warnings: Rough oral sex, handjobs, anal fingering, overstimulation, intercrural sex, Dom/sub overtones, body-worship, surrendering and exchanging power and control, forced orgasms. Afterglow, close contact and proximity, silent intimacy and vulnerability.

**“He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.”**

**―Dante Alighieri**

* * *

 

And Fox has _barely_ taken a third of that gorgeous prick in—with his left hand squeezing and tugging the Paladin’s balls and his right wrapped around the Paladin’s erection and pushing down foreskin—when the Paladin suddenly thrusts into his mouth and partway down his throat with a sharp, powerful jab that’s almost too much for even Fox’s tried-and-tested gag-reflex. His fingers clench tight in Fox’s hair, tight enough to ache thrillingly, even if they’re yet wary of guiding Fox’s motions

 

No dilettante at such activities, Fox lets his right hand fall away from the Paladin’s prick and drop to his own, diamond-hard, hot, and restless behind the cloth prison of his trousers. It’s the work of but a moment to free himself, but he avoids the upright length of agony and need that is his prick for his balls. For matching the squeezing and tugging he’s giving the Paladin . . . if rather a good deal rougher and more forceful.

 

As the Paladin’s certainty, confidence, and arousal mount, his grip in Fox’s hair tightens further—stops being reactive, occasional, careful and almost apologetic. It quickly becomes masterful and commanding. Tight and dominant. Fox soon has to leave off fondling the Paladin’s balls for gripping his calf for balance. The Paladin’s hands are holding Fox’s head still, but for the peremptory angling that presages driving his prick into Fox’s mouth and throat, fucking his face with increasing abandon and desperation. Such is the intensity of his need, and so obvious is it, that Fox doesn’t need to, nor does he have a single moment of reprieve or relenting to employ his many lauded and addictive prick-teasing methods. He barely has the wherewithal to take short, quick measured breaths that whistle in through his nose, then back out, while the first finger of his right hand, tease and tickle and tweak the sensitive strip of flesh behind his balls.

 

By the time Fox pushes two fingers slowly, teasingly into his body, riding out its slightly alarmed spasms at the sudden, uneased and unprepared-for intrusion, the Paladin’s thrusts are still fast and powerful, but lacking rhythm and coordination. He’s simply driving himself as far down Fox’s throat as he can as often as he can, seeking out wet heat and a tight channel to claim and possess and mark. Thus, when Fox begins to groan continuously from the bittersweet pleasure-pain of the fingers he’s working almost incautiously into his hungry, spasming body, it’s no surprise that’s when the _Paladin_ achieves his dramatic climax. He shouts, startled, dismayed, and primal, and thrusts hardest of all while pulling Fox’s head forward and down, and holding it there. His release erupts down Fox’s esophagus in furious, scalding spurts that seem to occur so far down, Fox’s gag-reflex doesn’t even react to them, though the very core of him is seemingly scorched and lit-up.

 

Through it all, Fox is smiling. Swallowing reflexively. And smiling. At the Paladin, at the glowing darkness on the backs of his eyelids—at the world. He doesn’t notice that his fingers have stilled, or when they slip free of his for once at-peace body.

Fox _does_ notice the Paladin’s right hand gives up its tight clench in his hair and settles heavily on his left shoulder. Shortly after that—or perhaps an eternity after—the Paladin pulls Fox’s mouth off his prick by the roots of his hair, making a weird, wild whimper as he does. Fox hears the sound as he falls backward on his ass and goes sprawling but doesn’t quite process it. He can’t metabolize this aftermath: the Paladin’s hoarse panting, breathless grunts, the beat of his heart in his ears and the pulse at his temples, or the hoarse, throat-twinging moans sounding with his own every exhale.

 

He can’t process _anything_ over the sounds of this surreal and perfect dream. . . .

 

When he can finally summon the impetus and courage to open his dazed eyes, the world as explained by his senses returns fully. He’s winded and shivering as a reaction to his continuing arousal and the chill of the evening. From the wide-eyed, intense stare the Paladin is leveling at him. The other man’s face is pale but for a brilliant, near-scarlet flush from his collarbone to his hairline. His lips are bitten and wet, and very slightly parted.

 

The air between and around their bodies is bright and dark with light and night, with the sharp greens of the wilds and the musky-salty-low scent of sex and come and _want_.

 

The Paladin’s breathing is harsher than normal, but no longer a pant. His prick is half-spent but seems poised for further . . . activity. Fox reflexively swallows, and his entire throat complains and exults. He can still taste the Paladin’s prick, but not his come, as none of it actually touched Fox’s tongue. So, he licks his use-swollen lips for the memory of the Paladin’s precome. Even that faint-salt taste is enough to make Fox’s balls and entrance throb with aching-hot anticipation and imperative.

 

The Paladin watches him as a hawk must watch a rodent—or as a god must watch an ant: distant and mildly curious . . . but mostly indifferent. . . .

 

Or so Fox thinks until the hawk-god crashes to his knees with a pained, winded grunt. Gaping, Fox continues to sit a-sprawl as the Paladin closes the brief distance between them, kneeling between Fox’s spread thighs and staring at Fox’s poking-out prick as if at a perplexing logic problem.

 

“Come here, Corporal,” he says, biting his lip and meeting Fox’s eyes. Still somewhat dazed and confused—jolted and shaken—Fox obeys, sitting up straight, then getting to his knees when the Paladin’s expression flickers with impatience.

 

Then, the Paladin’s knee-walking closer, still, until only a deep breath separates their bodies. His dark gaze ticks to Fox’s puffy-sore mouth and another expression, both tender-soft and predator-possessive, leavens his solemn face. Finally, however, his mouth twitches as if it wants to smile, and he reaches up to brush his right thumb across Fox’s lower lip.

 

His eyelids fluttering with wanting to shut and savor or stay open and simply take in this hawk-god Paladin, Fox sighs and parts his lips to flick his tongue against, lick, swirl around, and lave the Paladin’s thumb . . . before nibbling it into his mouth for gentle suction that nonetheless doesn’t mask his need—his _greed_ —and relish.

 

His eyes have only just settled on shutting when the Paladin pulls his thumb free. A bare moment later, he’s manhandling Fox’s acquiescent body, turning him to face the yards-distant fire.

 

Feeling as if he’s still in some ethereal, free-floating dream, Fox’s eyes open once more, only to be dazzled by the leap-dance of small-scale nuclear glow. He gasps as his shirt is pushed up and off with barely any of his assistance, then his trousers are shoved down. He grunts and whimpers as the Paladin pulls him roughly back against his hot, hard body and bends him forward a bit.

 

At the feel of the Paladin’s mostly-hard prick against the small of his back, then shifted downward to nestle just between the cheeks of his ass, Fox moans loud enough that it’s surely heard back in Sanctuary Hills. He’s held against the Paladin flush and tight, caged and kept by the other man’s strong arm around his midsection. The intensified contact pushes the Paladin’s prick more definitely between his cheeks, causing a startled and desperate near-squeak to jump from Fox’s aching-bruised throat.

 

Before he can gather himself together well enough to beg, the Paladin’s big hand wraps around Fox’s prick, tight and hot, callused and deliberate. Hitching his own body against Fox’s in truncated, but powerful thrusts, the Paladin strokes Fox off with little in the way of finesse, but with clear determination, dedication, and appetite. He, too, alternates his attention between Fox’s aching prick and throbbing balls. Sometimes, his fingers accidentally brush the strip of over-sensitized skin behind them and Fox cries out . . . lost to delicious, intensely agonizing pleasure, his head thrown back and lolling on the Paladin’s shoulder.

 

After one of these helpless, bereft cries, the Paladin’s arm tightens around Fox’s waist, possessive-protective-promising, and he nuzzles Fox’s shoulder, up to his exposed neck, then presses his face just at the junction between ear and jaw . . . and breathes. Harsh, humid, hot. His lips move on Fox’s skin in kisses, or perhaps whispers. Or perhaps both. His hips suddenly gain speed and power, the blunt-hot line of his prick pressing against Fox’s asshole with each thrust, like the best kind of torture. Fox moves to meet these thrusts and to meet the hand now doing more no-nonsense squeezing and yanking of his prick and balls than loverly stroking of them.

 

After an eternity of escalating pleasure so sweet and sharp it’s fantastic torment, the Paladin’s teeth nip at, latch onto, then _anchor_ in Fox’s right earlobe. Between the bite and the bare-teasing soothe of the Paladin’s tongue—and the first conscious and decisive hitch-and-rub of the Paladin’s callused fingertip most of the way along Fox’s perineum and nearly to the expectant pucker behind it—Fox comes suddenly and violently.

 

A howl-cry of completion and surrender is rubbed and dry-humped—wrung from his tensed and taut body. It’s tugged and cajoled out of him by more of the Paladin’s no-nonsense handjob even after Fox has ejaculated to the point of pain. The Paladin keeps stroking and coaxing until Fox comes utterly dry, his body convulsing and jerking, his prick gone beyond over-sensitive to all but nonresponsive.

 

Until Fox himself is too drained and limp and shell-shocked to do more than shudder and shiver. To occasionally huff out a silent sob.

 

When he returns to himself, hitching and blinking— _panting and sagging_ , but being kept upright with seemingly throwaway ease—he’s still held tight against the Paladin’s strong, sturdy body. The taller man’s face is pressed to and buried in Fox’s hair and his now fully-spent prick is still nestled familiarly between Fox’s cheeks in slick-warm come that’s starting to get tacky.

 

Incredibly pleased and satisfied, somewhere under his soreness, weariness, and many aches, Fox mumbles something hoarse and broken that’s the closest he can manage to an awed, mythopoeic: “ _Paladin_.”

 

Such bare and coarse croaking is not good enough. Fox knows nothing else in this moment, but he certainly knows _that_. So, before the Paladin can raise even a hint of indignation at such ingratitude—before the soft, silent susurrus of the Paladin’s breathing can change—Fox flops and flails his left arm until his tingling-lax hand lands on the larger one still grasping Fox’s prick with an unurgent, but unmistakable claim.

 

“ _Domine_ ,” Fox sighs, in acknowledgement not only of the Paladin’s claim, but his right to make it and bind Fox with it. Half-breathless and still near-voiceless, he yanks on the Paladin’s heavy hand and arm, not bothering to verbally answer the Paladin’s absent, but enquiring grunts. Fox pulls and hauls and exerts himself to get that hand up to his face. When he does, he finally opens his bleary-exhausted eyes, blinking and squinting until his vision achieves something close to focus.

 

After a few moments of wonder and bemusement at the ridiculous, yet pleasing sight of his come all over the Paladin’s palm and fingers—in trailing drops and tenacious spatters—Fox kisses along the Paladin’s slick, unbroken heartline with a sense of religious veneration and simple gratitude.

 

Then he thoroughly, worshipfully licks the Paladin’s hand—to an increasing chorus of the Paladin’s quietly gusty huffs and groans—until it’s clean. And for quite some time after that, too. His mind is restfully adrift on the faint-light flicker of the campfire on his closed eyelids, and the not-unfamiliar scent and taste of his own come. Of skin and sweat, smoke and metal.

 

Through it all, the Paladin holds Fox tight and close, his face buried in Fox’s hair. His breathing is so soft and even and gentle, it barely stirs a single floofy, night-dark wave.


	10. NO SURPRISES (PLEASE)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More sex and sex-ploration (see what I did, there?). Almost no conversation. At least not verbal. Sexy-feels and feelsy-feels, and more of the drowning-deep and addictive intimacy that’s sprung up between them. They _really_ like to touch each other, and in any ways possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes/Warnings: Sex, anal fingering, rimming, handjob, frottage, Dom/sub overtones, body-worship, surrendering and exchanging power and control. Cuddling.

**“Remember tonight . . . for it is the beginning of always.”**

**―Dante Alighieri, Inferno**

* * *

 

The chill of the evening and several yards of distance from the fire eventually rouses the Paladin, if not Fox, to their exposed state.

 

While Fox still coasts on the persistent high of a peaceful, blissful afterglow, the Paladin leaves off his soft, sated breathing for a sigh and grumbling; the sporadic thrusts of his flaccid prick along the entrance to Fox’s body lessens then, for a total lack of contact below their waists; the hand grasping Fox’s slippery-sensitive prick reluctantly lets go, after a long, pointed, _owning_ stroke. One that drags a raw, wavering moan from Fox’s aching, abraded throat.

 

And lastly, the Paladin’s protective-possessive embrace changes tenor—becomes something a bit more efficacious, as he shifts their heavy-tired bodies away from the near-ish firepit. He gets Fox knee-walking, as well, after a few huffs of indignation and incredulity, and before Fox knows it—literally, he has no idea what the Paladin’s game-plan is until he flops forward on it, face down—he’s sprawled on the Paladin’s spare bedroll. Shirtless, with his trousers tangled around his calves. Spattered with the Paladin’s come from his ass to his knees, he smiles smugly at the fleeting, barely-conscious realization that he must look utterly debauched.

 

He drifts on this realization, letting it carry him closer to the dreamland he rarely gets to anymore, without the aid of powerful chems. Thus, he’s even more startled when his boots and trousers get yanked off, followed by something cool and wet brushing up his right inner thigh.

 

“You’re a mess, Corporal. We both are,” the Paladin says, both wry and apologetic, in response to Fox’s complaining moan. The cool wetness—a cleansing cloth with a rough texture that, coolness of the cloth aside, gives Fox’s body ideas about rallying—moves efficiently, but thoroughly up and over his right thigh, then his left. At the cleft of his ass it’s briefly halted, then proceeds with the same thoroughness, but a lack of efficiency that could be described as _lingering_.

 

Exploratory and wondering and yearning.

 

“Paladin,” Fox gasps, shifting his hips restlessly for whatever friction can be obtained from the Paladin’s bedroll and the earth felt beneath it. Then Fox hisses and gasps some more as the Paladin—clearly done with mere cleansing—swipes the cool cloth across the twitching-anticipatory pucker of his asshole.

 

The Paladin is obviously not unaware of what such stimulus—in _his_ hands, at least—is doing to Fox.

 

The panting-harsh sounds of accelerating breaths seem to fill the clearing, but Fox can’t tell whose pants are whose. He spreads his thighs wider and higher to give the Paladin better access—to _get more_ —but the cloth disappears. Before Fox can even moan his displeasure, the rough-precise brush of the Paladin’s index finger replaces the swipe of the cloth.

 

Fox’s moans become groans as the Paladin teases him with one callused fingertip, never going further than pressing against Fox’s entrance with testing pressures. Fox’s body is no longer _trying_ to rally but rallied. He’s hard and would be erect, were he not on his stomach. Now, the firm, unyielding—bedroll-covered—consistency of the ground is all the torture previous friction had not been. But for the very tip of his prick, exposed between spread thighs and just below his balls, Fox’s prick is sandwiched-smothered between his own body and the living earth.

 

He’s lost to the onslaught of sensation and upward-spiraling pleasure, until the Paladin’s finger trails slowly, hesitantly away. Down toward and along Fox’s perineum, which stutters both their panting breaths, then zigzagging rather puckishly over his balls. Lingering there, too.

 

“Paladin—” Fox gasp-moans, stifling a giggle. The teasing tickle of the Paladin’s finger, though quite lovely, is _not_ what he needs most, right now. “I . . . _oh-oh-oh . . . yes . . . please_. . . .”

 

Another light-hot huff of the Paladin’s breath across his entrance and the slight curve of an almost-smile against his ass cheeks—spread open and held, now, by the Paladin’s large, capable hands—is all the warning Fox gets before the first world-shaking rasp of the Paladin’s enthusiastic tongue.

 

Fox’s groan is _very_ loud—and only grows louder as the Paladin sounds him out with licks and rasps and teases of varying intensities and pressures. It’s only when Fox has once more been reduced to seeking friction from the bedroll-covered earth that the Paladin pauses, his face pressing against Fox, lips whisper-kissing flesh that tingles and burns for more and harder.

 

“ _D-Dominus_ ,” Fox stutters out as the Paladin’s right hand leaves his ass. Then Fox looses another primal, wavering cry as the Paladin’s finger drags firmly down his balls again, to the exposed head of his prick, where it traces and teases. Smears precome and further sensitizes the tip by pressing it with varying intensities and pressures, as well.

 

Fox shouts, low and hoarse, when the Paladin’s tongue returns to its previous task with gusto and determination—pushes against then past the guardian muscle and into his body without hesitation. The Paladin’s tongue hungrily squirms and writhes, shamelessly curls and thrusts inside Fox, scalding-hot and obscenely wet, like the Paladin’s face, pressed so close.

 

Soon, Fox does his best to contain his more vocal exclamations, because the Paladin is making some rather delicious exclamations of his own. Groans and moans, huffs and darkly promising chuckles. Hums that send Fox’s body and psyche into the stratosphere, and soft, sated grunts every time Fox gasps, shudders, then clenches around his tongue as if to keep it.

 

The Paladin’s fingers continue to tease the flushed and swollen head of Fox’s prick with no urgency—torture with no agenda other than wringing from Fox hoarse, prideless begging. At that, the Paladin and his fingers—and his _tongue_ —are absolutely successful.

 

It’s when Fox has lost all track of place and time, thought and speech—all track of himself—that the Paladin stops. After one last breathy-hot huff, he shifts about and turns Fox onto his back.

 

Squinting open eyes now used to unleavened inner-darkness, Fox blinks blearily, until the Paladin comes in to focus. The bodysuit is gone, as are the boots, and the Paladin is kneeling next to Fox completely nude.

 

Completely glorious.

 

He’s all prominent, conditioned muscle under hairy, pale-flushed skin. His shoulders and chest are beautifully broad, his waist and abdomen are trim and firm. Narrow hips and powerful thighs showcase the Paladin’s erection. He’s slightly more than half-hard again, flushed and mouth-wateringly described by the distant firelight. Fox instinctively opens his mouth and spreads his legs wide.

 

Brows raised and smiling just a little, the Paladin moves to between Fox’s welcoming thighs. Hovers over Fox, staring down at him—and the glistening-upstanding column of his flushed, desperate prick—with more than a little awe.

 

It’s not a gaze or sentiment Fox is used to, and he shivers, closing his eyes. Not long after he has, he feels the shy-slow press of lips against his own. When Fox gasps, startled, that press becomes the Paladin’s mouth slotting to his own for a nervous, awkward . . . somehow perfect kiss that makes Fox’s chest ache so suddenly and sharply, that he moans into the Paladin’s mouth. A response which seems to spur the other man on. He deepens the kiss just as awkwardly as he’d initiated it, but not nearly so nervously.

 

It is the least-expert, least-coordinated . . . most sweetly enthusiastic kiss Fox has ever received. The _best kiss_ he’s ever received, and under its juggernaut assault, he simply melts. Submits. Gives himself over entirely.

 

And perhaps the Paladin senses this—Fox wouldn’t be surprised . . . for the Paladin seems to have been designed simply to tantalize, draw, anger, confound, dismay, startle, and endear him—for he settles his solid body gingerly on Fox’s, smiling into their kiss as Fox sighs contentedly into it. He grinds his growing erection against Fox’s, then prods his balls and his ass with both frustration and promise. Then he braces himself up a bit on his left arm, while his right hand grasps Fox’s left ankle and pushes his leg up.

 

Once Fox realizes he’s meant to keep that leg up, he does, and the Paladin’s hand disappears. Moments later, two fingers are pressing briefly against his asshole. Then pushing into his body with steady, controlled force.

 

Fox gasps then wails into the kiss, effectively breaking it as he shudders, shakes, thrashes—bucks up, but barely, under the Paladin’s weight—then finally, after a dozen or so hard, measured thrusts, comes in the heated, damp haven of their pressed-together bodies.

 

This time, after the seismic event of his climax has passed, even before Fox’s body begins to cool and settle and still, he’s gone to a sleep that’s actually _rest_ and lasts until the fire’s burned low and false dawn washes out the stars.

 

The Paladin, for his part, wipes them both down again, and shifts and maneuvers Fox’s lax, lazy body, until the Paladin takes up most of the bedroll and Fox takes up most of the Paladin, with his face tucked tight into the curve of neck and shoulder.

 

The feel of the Paladin’s heartbeat, beating slow and steady and strong next to Fox’s own, both colors and safeguards dreams he will never remember, but which leave behind feelings of security, belonging, and permanence.

 

#

 

“Have you not slept, Paladin?”

 

At Fox’s soft, murmuring question, the Paladin draws a deep, deep breath, despite three-quarters of Fox’s weight resting so leadenly upon him. The large hand settled so familiarly at the small of Fox’s bare back twitches, then scritches and scratches as if Fox is part cat.

 

“I . . . don’t sleep much, Corporal. I never have. Maybe it’s a . . . synth-thing,” the Paladin allows, stiff and ashamed and _bitter_.

 

Fox hums noncommittally, stretching a little and snuggling a lot, nuzzling up to the Paladin’s ear, then along the line of his jaw. When he reaches the Paladin’s chin, he shifts and leans up to kiss the solemn, turned-down mouth and spare lips which, even in this moment of inner consternation, meet his without reluctance or pause. With another hum, this one pleased, Fox lets the Paladin control the kiss, happily fumbling his way through it with too much tongue, eager and unsubtle, before pulling away. Briefly, only for long enough to capture the man’s conscious consideration again. When he feels that somber-weighty dark gaze on his face, patient and keen, Fox smiles and doesn’t open his eyes. Merely initiates another kiss which he then dominates from start to finish, alternating chaste busses with wanton devouring: licks . . . both light and languorous, with viciously reverent nips of the Paladin’s lips and tongue. He explores the Paladin’s mouth meticulously, slowly, but with conviction, swallowing the other man’s soft, surprised, overwhelmed whimpers and moans.

 

By the time false dawn has given over to darkness once more, then darkness over to the washed-out indigo-pink-gray of an eastern dawn, the Paladin is both desperate and pliant under Fox’s ministrations and under Fox. His lips are kiss-swollen, soft, and slick, and far more knowledgeable and coordinated than they’d been the night before.

 

Finally, the Paladin’s sprawled on his messy bedroll, with Fox lying on his chest and straddling his left leg, squeezing and tugging on his balls with a precisely controlled hand. Unsurprisingly and providentially, the Paladin is hard again—Fox wonders if this impressive refractory time is a synth-trait, or perhaps a side effect of a life which he suspects has been low on sexual liaisons or even physical contact—but not attempting to do anything about that. He seems content to accept what Fox is in the mood to give . . . or take.

 

As of his waking, Fox’s been hard, just as he’s awoken nearly every morning for two-thirds of his life. Simple, unambitious morning wood.

 

Now, however, despite his own languorous pacing of this assignation, Fox finds himself growing increasingly desperate to assert the power and control the Paladin has placed in his hands. To wield dominance that has never once been offered or entrusted to him—at least not in a sexual arena—but about which he has very concrete ideas regarding uses and needs, steps and outcomes.

 

The heretofore gentle and patient exploration of the Paladin’s wet-warm and accommodating mouth—Fox has Plans, yes, he does, for finding out very soon exactly _how_ accommodating—changes tenor slowly, but inexorably. Until Fox’s sensual tease of a kiss becomes suggestive, domineering, marking of territory, with thrusts of tongue that telegraph his desires and his plans (Plans) quite plainly.

 

But, even if the clearly dazed Paladin hadn’t been picking up on that unsubtle hint, he surely does pick up on it and everything it could herald when Fox’s possessive grip-and-squeeze of his balls lightens, lessens, then works its way further down. And back.

 

“Corporal—” the Paladin gasps or tries to around Fox’s forceful tongue and the bold, ravenous insistence of Fox’s mouth, which—along with feverish-biting teases and tweaks along the undoubtedly virgin territory awaiting the Providence-blessed fingers of Fox’s right hand—is apparently quite distracting and deleterious on the man’s already weakening intention to resist.

 

And when the index and middle fingers of Fox’s right hand press fleetingly, but firmly and repeatedly, against the tiny-tight pucker at the end of that virgin trail, the Paladin shakes, stiffens, then shakes some more, as if torn between fight-flight-or-freeze.

 

Fox intensifies the kiss with both force and indelicacy, as he feints and promises with barely-restrained fingers. Then he breaks it and leans back just enough to look down into the Paladin’s eyes, partly shuttered by pale, fluttering lids and stubby, dark lashes. He looks terribly lost and terribly young.

 

But also . . . highly aroused. Voracious.

 

Shifting so that he’s no longer straddling the Paladin’s left leg, but kneeling confidently between both, Fox smirks and steals a quick, soft kiss, with a sharp nip at the end of it. The Paladin groans very loud, indeed, when Fox’s fingers return to their poised-to-breach position . . . even though they proceed no further, yet.

 

“Bend your knees, Paladin, and spread your thighs wider. Also, if at all possible, you may wish to only focus on relaxing your body. On anticipating how much pleasure you will derive from receiving and submitting to mine . . . and the unique satisfaction of being well-taken and well-owned,” he advises, though the advice is a thin veneer for what’s really asserting command and control. For wielding this new power and dominance for as long as it is his to wield.

 

The Paladin’s wide eyes widen further, his flushed face going scarlet, and his swollen-pursed lips forming a surprised “O.” One that doesn’t change as Fox absently grabs for the nearby tangle of the discarded bodysuit and his own bloody-dirty shirt with his free hand. Nor does it change as Fox tries to wedge the bundle of cloth under the Paladin’s ass for angling and access. In fact, the Paladin still looks shocked and dazed even as he shifts and lifts his body.

 

He may not be running on prior experience, but his instincts are certainly laudable.

 

Fox’s pleased, unrestrained grin is fleeting but beaming. He’s certain that however keen and incisive the Paladin’s instincts, his _actual_ experience isn’t remotely commensurate. That, however, rather than presenting a hurdle, fills Fox with satisfaction and . . . tenderness he’s never before felt.

 

“I . . . Corporal— _Fox_ —we—” the Paladin begins to say as he settles on the arranged pile of cloth. His speech, such as it is, is rushed, breathless, and stammered, and his eyes widen even more as the pressure of Fox’s fingers increases beyond mere teasing for a few moments . . . only to vanish again.

 

Only for those fingers to reappear at the Paladin’s parted lips, resting on the lower one.

 

“I would further suggest that you wet these very thoroughly,” Fox says, also wielding his most benevolent and serene smile. It grows a bare tic wider, but infinitely deeper in the face of the Paladin’s shock, and . . . consideration.

 

The Paladin licks his lips anxiously, his dark eyes scanning Fox’s face intently. Fox, nearly vibrating out of his skin with the need to take and have the Paladin as vigorously and frequently as circumstance allows, nevertheless holds himself patient and still.

 

Much as he holds the Paladin in growing esteem, affinity, and affection.

 

At last, the Paladin meets Fox’s gone-solemn gaze and keeps it with his own for long, _long_ moments. . . .

 

. . . then, the Paladin’s thighs are no longer directly bracketing Fox’s body, but spreading wide, with bent knees drawing up like the peaks of twin mountains. The body under and around Fox’s tenses and relaxes several times, before finally settling almost bonelessly— _obediently_ —and maintaining that state.

 

The state of submission, anticipation, and trust.

 

Fox’s resulting smile is one he’s never felt cross his lips before this moment. And for more long, _long_ moments that thrill and arouse, Fox replaces his fingers with his mouth: kissing the half-whimpering, half-chuckling Paladin breathless. He gently grinds and eventually thrusts his intentions against the Paladin’s prick and balls and perineum, groaning himself when the Paladin responds with eager return-thrusts and ardent, feverish bucking and shimmying.

 

And though _now_ isn’t the time to reiterate this particular sentiment, the _Dominus_ that resounds throughout Fox’s being is the deepest and truest—the most _joyful_ certainty he’s ever experienced.


	11. LUCKY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crux of the matter; everybody knows, consents to, and enjoys their roles; _“Vale!”_ to Danse’s Virginity . . . we hardly knew ye; and _AFTERGLOW_ . . . complete with the sort of ill-thought-out pillow-talk that _fucking derails it completely_. Because, _of course._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes/Warnings: Unambiguous Dom/sub, body-worship, anal fingering, anal sex. Sexy-feels and feelsy-feels, and more deepening intimacy. Intentional giving of trust and informed consent. Intentional, informed surrendering and exchanging of power and control (in more ways than the sexual). Loss of virginity. Afterglow. Monkey-wrench.

**“Love insists the loved loves back.”**

**―Dante Alighieri**

* * *

 

When Fox regains his sense and the briefly derailed train of his ultimate desire, he breaks their kiss, but leans his forehead against the Paladin’s, their lips brushing with every exhalation and their noses side-by-side.

 

The Paladin finally shivers, after more than a minute spent thus, and Fox takes a deep breath, meaning to speak. But he lets it out as a soft, shaky sigh, pressing his lips lightly and quickly to the Paladin’s, once more.

 

“ _Thoroughly_ ,” he repeats, his voice hoarse and rough from the battle between his own hunger and his determined restraint. But the Paladin groans almost soundlessly before nodding once, barely, but definitely.

 

Fox shifts a bit and levers himself up enough on his free arm, then brings the first two fingers of his other hand back to the Paladin’s soft, slick lips. He caresses them tenderly, his callused fingertips then tracing outlines before returning to the Paladin’s lower lip. All the while, the Paladin’s dark, brimming-full gaze seems to shine so brightly up at him and see so deeply into him, Fox doesn’t dare to meet it. That gaze is both infinite, starry sky and eternal, spiraling abyss: harder than onyx yet softer, still, than the shadows of twilight. . . .

 

All of which is temporarily lost beyond the dense ether of Fox’s hunger and desire when the Paladin’s lips part, then the top lip gets swiped by the timorous tip of the Paladin’s tongue. Then, the bottom lip . . . and Fox’s fingers.

 

He makes a garbled, almost choked sound, as of a moan meeting a grunt at the halfway point of his trachea. His eyes tick to the Paladin’s once more, only to find them closed and his brow furrowed in concentration.

 

With a soft, yearning-desperate-satisfied sound that Fox has never heard from a lover before, the Paladin sucks Fox’s fingers into his mouth all the way to the knuckle. He diligently and beautifully follows Fox’s suggestions for wetting them, treating those fingers to sucking and swirls of tongue . . . and to the delicious, indecently eager slide of his wet, welcoming mouth on and off of Fox’s fingers.

 

Perhaps the same way that mouth—so wanton in its obedience . . . and at least twice as a sweet—might slide on and off Fox’s prick.

 

Whatever sound Fox makes at this arousing thought, the Paladin’s eyes flutter open and lock on his. This time, as the Paladin maintains eye-contact that isn’t challenging—but it _is_ wide open . . . _broken-open_ —Fox does not look away. He lets himself be taken, as he prepares to take. He is lost and given over, now, not to his desires, but to his Paladin’s.

 

Fox smiles, small and solemn, his hips shifting and seeking to more perfectly slot the smooth-heated friction of the Paladin’s prick against his own. He presses his fingers deeper into the hot-wet haven of the Paladin’s mouth, overwhelming his palate deliberately, until the Paladin starts to hitch and gag a bit, lids and lashes fluttering in mild distress. His wetting and ministrations are foregone for the sweet simplicity of shameless sucking when Fox presses on a little more—

 

—followed by a truncated, overwhelmed, but famished-needy whimper that means everything but _stop_.

 

His solemn smile turned to a predatory smirk, Fox pulls his fingers free and replaces them with his mouth and tongue, once more, taking the Paladin’s mouth hard enough to likely leave bruises around it. His right hand doesn’t take the long route back to the Paladin’s perineum, ass, and entrance. They press firmly again, warningly, before overcoming the instinctive resistance of the Paladin’s body, then sinking deeper and deeper in. To the Paladin’s bitten-off hisses and encouraging—almost demanding—groans, which are pressed into the ragged, breathless remains of their kiss.

 

Fox hums and grunts his approval as his fingers are engulfed and subsumed into close, clutching heat that both accepts him and fights him. He very nearly comes from the sensation but pauses to wrestle more restraint into his wayward body, as he has no intentions of wasting a chance to potentially spend himself in the Paladin’s.

 

Under him, shaking once more, the Paladin’s moaning is continuous, but for the occasional hitch and gasp for breath. His eyes are squeezed shut, with tears leaking from their outer corners, and his nostrils are flaring. Fox’s fingers are barely halfway in, and already the Paladin’s nearly bitten his lower lip bloody.

 

Fox tsks, chastising himself for losing track of their kiss enough to allow it to break, then claims the Paladin’s mouth once again, starting with that lower lip: teasing it from the ungentle worrying of the Paladin’s teeth and into his own mouth. Between his own teeth. After gentle nibbling that seems to relax the Paladin’s entire body, Fox surges into another thorough, exploratory kiss. As sensual and overwhelming as he can manage, and for as long. Indeed, the kiss carries them through his fingers hilting in the Paladin’s hot, tight body; through slow, soft scissoring thrusts that build incrementally in speed and force; through the exacting search for the Paladin’s prostate.

 

When the Paladin jerks and jolts beneath him and around him, as if electrocuted, Fox breaks the kiss to rest his forehead on the Paladin’s once again. Their shared breaths are hot and gasping.

 

“ _Oh!_ ” the Paladin gulps then laughs, shivering and shaking. Then he brings every applicable muscle in his body to bear on Fox’s fingers, angling and shifting his pelvis in needy little thrusts, as if to take in more of Fox than just two fingers. “ _Please, Fox. More_.”

 

It’s almost two minutes before Fox manages to recover himself and his self-control from that. His tone, when he can speak, is mild, but his voice itself is all gravel and greed.

 

“Yes. Perhaps someday, you will be ready to take all of my fingers, my hand, and then some,” he purrs, though it’s a half-growl . . . if a wistful and hopeful one. His smile is a pleased curve against the Paladin’s cheek. “Until that hallowed day, we shall have to make do, yes?”

 

“ _UNNNHHH_!” the Paladin grunts, stark and low in the otherwise quiet dawn, when Fox withdraws his fingers only to drive them back in hard and fast. And repeatedly. He applies varying pressures to the Paladin’s prostate with relentless scholarship and endless resolve. “ _Yeeeh . . . eh—y-yes! YES! Please_!”

 

Fox is sweating and so is the Paladin. They slide against each other as their bodies race toward bliss and release. The furnace-heat baking off the Paladin, needy and seductive, is _intense_. The heat _inside_ the Paladin is the heart of a galactic-class nuclear reactor—of a _sun_ whose name, even gently whispered, would make the one rising above them cower in shame and terror and awe.

 

Fox absently wonders if he, himself, would be utterly consumed upon his initial taking of the Paladin . . . if he’d burn-up prick first, in agony and ecstasy.

 

Should that turn out to be the case, Fox can only imagine he would die in unexpected, but utter contentment.

 

“You are beautiful like this, Danse,” he says gravely, sitting up so that he’s kneeling and half-bent over the Paladin’s near-convulsing body. He says this without opening his eyes, knowing that if he were to look upon the other man in this moment, this liaison would end quickly and not at all satisfactorily.

 

And, anyway, the beauty Fox is seeing has nothing to do with anything that can be adequately taken in by his eyes.

 

As his fingers work inside the Paladin’s bucking, straining body—all forceful promise and relentless _priming_ —Fox doesn’t waste time cursing himself for having not left his pack near enough to retrieve the lubrication he _always_ carries. Instead, he wets his palm with spit and slicks himself as quickly and as best he can, though that friction is tortuous.

 

Steeling himself for a moment, he opens his eyes as he pulls his fingers out of the Paladin’s greedy-demanding body. The immediate and whining moan that starts up as a result, is cut off by a deep, startled gasp as Fox pushes those powerful thighs wider, lowers himself to the Paladin’s body and—with his right hand braced to the left of the Paladin’s waist—guides his wet-ready prick forward and in with his left hand.

 

They both cry out—the Paladin’s cry is creaking, cracking, and pained, and Fox’s is guttural and primal—as Fox forces his way past that twitching, spasming guardian muscle, then drives the first third of his prick into hot, wet, tight heaven.

 

He barely even notices the bruising-hard, aching-tight clamp of the Paladin’s big hands on his upper right bicep and left shoulder. He’s too busy fighting the urge to either slide home at once, fast and hard, and come until he surely dies. Or fucking the Paladin hard and unremittingly, until the other man’s insides are battered, bloody, and raw. With that same option on coming and dying, for Fox.

 

“Corporal . . . _Fox_ . . . _please_ ,” the Paladin all but sobs, his body clenching and releasing around Fox, only to clench again. Pulling him deeper even as it tries to resist him.

 

But now that Fox has had this true and addictive taste, even if there were resistance, it would be futile. Not to mention useless.

 

Every millimeter of Fox’s steady advance is met with a sound of pained, but welcoming surrender: tiny moans, soft grunts, breathless groans, and poignant, passionate whimpers. Such is the Paladin’s submissiveness and desperate compliance—such is the pleasure being coaxed and all but wrung from the Paladin’s strong, given-over body from Fox’s insistent invasion of and conviction to conquer it—that Fox heeds his instinct to clamp down on the base of the Paladin’s prick. It tangibly spasms in Fox’s grip not three seconds later: powerful and _intense_ . . .  and aborted.

 

Fox instinctively clamps down even harder on the Paladin’s prick, not that that’s a chore. It’s thick, slippery with precome, hard and hot as a forge—and _just-barely thwarted_ , if the Paladin’s wild, broken-deprived cry is anything to go by.

 

“ _P-Please_. . . .” the Paladin begs, poignant and powerless . . . _perfect_ like this. His body is shaking and quaking and writhing as he bucks and fights Fox’s prick and Fox’s grip. Fox shivers and squeezes his eyes shut tighter, pushing deeper into the Paladin’s mutinous body. When he can go no further—in this position and angle—he stills, tries to catch his breath, and screws his self-control to the sticking place.

 

“ _Yes_ , Paladin. I will give you _everything_ you need,” he eventually swears, grit-toothed and broken-voiced. “Everything. _Anything_. But _you_ must _let me give it to you_. _Taking_ what you can from me won’t satisfy the need burning in you. _Burning you up_. I promise you that. _Right now_ , you _need_ to be taken, not to take. To give yourself over and accept that the giving-over is where you will find your satisfaction, and your place in your own skin. I will satisfy your need—I will give you _everything_ , Danse. If you let me.”

 

Around him, the Paladin’s vise-like, hot-soft-claiming muscles clutch demandingly at Fox and release only that they might clutch tighter, still. Might claim _more_ of him. Fox is eager beyond doubt to be so claimed in totality, for as long as the Paladin wishes to keep him.

 

“Damnit, Corporal—” the Paladin gasps, brittle in this attempt to not be dominant—the Paladin is too mindless and deep in his need to play _that_ role efficaciously—but to domineer. To commandeer that which he thinks will satisfy him quickly and easily. He’s struggling to pull Fox closer even as he tries to wriggle and writhe from under him and out of his grasp.

 

But when Fox pulls out and forces his way back in fast, hard, and merciless—squeezing the Paladin’s prick rather harder than most men might find pleasurable—the Paladin howls until it echoes off the brightening sky.

 

It isn’t until Fox senses the Paladin’s mind and reason have mostly returned from the place where need and the stoking of that need had sent it, that he speaks again. Quietly, but loud enough to be heard over the Paladin’s gasping and moaning and huffing.

 

Fox sighs, shaky and uneven. “Let me give you everything you need, Paladin,” he says once more— _entreats_ , quiet and humble and hopeful. Under him, the Paladin is still markedly shaking and twitching . . . but otherwise, attempting to hold himself as still and receptive as possible. Listening and _hearing_ , at last, he’s tractable in Fox’s tight, quelling grip.

 

Still, Fox starts and nearly flies out of his skin when the Paladin’s right hand cups his face tenderly. His eyes fly open, wide and overwhelmed, himself. Even now, he can only stare into the Paladin’s deep, dark eyes, set below their noble, furrowed brow, and . . . yearn. Want. _Long_.

 

The Paladin’s thumb brushes gently and affectionately across Fox’s lips.

 

“Yes,” he says, plainly, almost shyly, blinking up at Fox as if seeing him for the first time. “I mean . . . you’ve _already_ . . . I didn’t know it would be so . . . _feel so_. . . right. That _having you in me_ would. . . .” the Paladin has turned practically cerise, but doesn’t look away for a single moment. “Anyway. _Thank you_ , Fox. And _yes_. Yes.”

 

The simple, earnest gratitude and trust shining from the Paladin—the firmly, _ravenously_ given consent—nearly undoes Fox in several ways. Wrestling again with his own control, Fox nips the Paladin’s thumb sharply, then leans down to steal the least expert, least-coordinated kiss _he_ has ever given. The Paladin still moans into and shakes under it as if receiving mana from the gods.

 

“I am going to take you, Danse,” Fox promises, rough and panting on the Paladin’s lips. They share another kiss that’s more Fox nipping and biting and bruising the Paladin’s mouth, than the sensual teasing of any of the kisses that had come before. “Do you mark my words? I am going to fuck you and come inside you. I will scald and scorch you in every way I can, inside and out. Until even your soul bears my brand, graven so deeply and so large, that the dullest, blindest profligate will see and know and tremble. And _no one_ will _dare_ gaze upon you with covetous intent . . . whether I am present at your side, or not. Because you are _mine_ and all the world will know it.”

 

The Paladin shivers, deep and long, and his eyes are wide—his pleased smile unhidden. “The things that come out of your mouth, Corporal Fox. I never know what I should be taking as your sincere vow—if anything—or with a big grain of salt.”

 

Fox allows himself a brief and fond smile. “Where _you_ are concerned, Paladin, _every_ word is my sincerely sworn vow. If you wish it to be and even if you do not. Are you ready?”

 

The Paladin’s eyes go wide once again, but he nods, biting his lip for a moment. Then he nods again and shores up his smile with trust and hope. Fox can’t help the next several kisses he takes, nor does he try. When the kisses end and he’s gritting his teeth not to simply come harder than he ever has, Fox draws four steadying breaths, then positions himself just so, testing the Paladin’s body and his resolve with brief, but firm thrusts that draw stuttered sighs and whistling hisses.

 

The Paladin— _Danse_ is eager to submit. To _obey_.

 

_He is ready._

 

“Please, _now . . . please_? ’M _ready_ , Fox. _Ahhhh_ ,” the Paladin begs on the back of a wavering gasp . . . not impatient, but desperately hopeful. Meek. Aroused. Wanton. Given-over _and_ laid-bare. The apotheosis of strength and beauty and desirability.

 

And he’s all Fox’s, or will be very, very soon.

 

“Yes, my perfect Paladin. You are,” Fox purrs, tender but dangerous. Then growls, dangerous but tender: “Brace yourself.”

 

#

 

“Have I satisfied you, for the nonce, Paladin?”

 

The reply to this and to the sustained circling, soothing—and yes, teasing-priming—of the Paladin’s puffy-slick entrance is a slightly jagged, very breathless laugh, complete with a shivering wince. “You’re being sarcastic, right?” He shifts a little and Fox, sprawled atop the Paladin’s strong, graceful body, slides a bit in the morass of sweat and come doing its best to glue them together from chest-to-abdomen.

 

A wave of unprecedented protectiveness and tenderness leavens Fox’s fierce possessiveness and desire to have the Paladin be as ready as possible as often as possible. His continuous touch ceases to be about preparation for fingering and, perhaps within the hour, another hard, extended taking. Now, Fox’s touch becomes about comfort, reassurance, and transmission of his genuine concern for the Paladin’s wellbeing and soundness.

 

Whether the man can be roused and ready for another fierce and intense session that satisfies Fox’s need but does the very _opposite_ of slaking it is still highly likely, however. Two birds slain by one efficient stone.

 

Fox finally leaves off his not-quite-fingering ministrations and slides his hand up the delicate, sensitive skin of the Paladin’s left inner thigh. The right thigh is leaning inward a little almost resting on Fox’s torso. As he watches his darker hand drift back and forth along the Paladin’s pale skin, he hears himself murmur, quite unexpectedly: “I . . . would be most distressed if you were . . . unwell. Or harmed to the point of never desiring this from me again. That would . . . be displeasing to me. Devastating.”

 

Shock tenses the Paladin’s body for a moment, before it suddenly relaxes even further. Fox looks up into the Paladin’s dark-bright eyes. His face, though tired, is as relaxed as the rest of his body.

 

Contented.

 

He shifts and urges Fox closer until their mouths meet, lips pressing and murmuring things neither of them can follow or translate with the tops of their minds. Fox pours every ounce of passion, yearning, and obsession into his kiss and it’s clear that his fervor overwhelms the Paladin . . . and is returned with matching fierceness and possessiveness.

 

Though it very nearly kills him, Fox breaks their kiss abruptly, licking, nipping, and biting his way down the Paladin’s body, tasting and savoring skin, and their mingled sweat and come. The Paladin’s abdominal muscles twitch and jump when Fox lavishes his attention and appreciation on them. His prick, too, twinges where it lay pressed between his body and Fox’s chest, though it doesn’t get hard—much—or stand up.

 

But it _wants_ to.

 

 _The Paladin_ wants it to. Wants to be taken again, hard and relentless, until he comes . . . _yet again,_ shouting and sobbing and out-of-his-mind with pleasure.

 

Fox is more than willing to dedicate himself to such a noble and worthy goal. He takes up fingering the Paladin again, but so, so gently, in deference to his own unaccustomed tender intentions and the Paladin’s sensitivity and soreness. It isn’t long before the Paladin’s hips work and move to meet Fox’s body, while he sighs and moans happily.

 

“Am I your first, Danse?” Fox queries, not solemnly, but not remotely playful, either. He kisses the muscle-wrapped bone of the Paladin’s pelvis, then his come-tacky pubic hair, and finally the prick nestled therein, waiting to be roused. Though appreciative of this unforeseen bounty and resplendence, Fox is . . . overwhelmed by the strong possibility of having been the first to take and pleasure the Paladin, in the direct aftermath that. His own exponentially escalating pleasure in doing so, while managing to wring such sweetly given-over trust and compliance and submission from so stoic and pure a champion, is more than a little dismaying. As is Fox’s swift and rooted-deep obsession with this man, in his particulars and his entirety. “Am I . . . the first man to take and have you in this way?”

 

“Am I _your first_?” the Paladin retorts with neither spite nor cruelty, but very, very unambiguous warning. His voice and body and _being_ instantly become a leveled threat, an impenetrable fortress, and an unscale-able boundary in the space of one nearly inflection-free rejoinder. “The first man to get under your skin and into your _blood_ this way? The first man you’ve ever wanted so goddamned _desperately and shamelessly_? Am _I your_ first?”


	12. THE TOURIST

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Afterglow was glow-y, until Fox let his mouth get ahead of his discretion. Danse doesn’t appreciate the turn the pillow-talk has taken. One step forward and two steps back . . . although . . . it might be the other way around. A wistful “Salve!” to _Vulpes Inculta’s_ first love. Then a timely “Vale!”
> 
> Followed by a “hello, again,” to _Corporal Fox’s_ first—last and only—love. And “hello,” and “hello,” and “hello. . . .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Chapter Notes/Warnings:** Mentions of loss of virginity during the Afterglow. Angst and defensiveness. Feelsy-feels, intimacy and trust issues. Affection and fondness. Quantum leaps of faith. FEELS. More intentional giving of trust. Backstory and Vulpes Inculta’s first love. Body-worship, oral sex, anal fingering, anal sex.
> 
>  **SENSITIVE SUBJECTS:** SPOILERS for FO:NV. Mentions of past-crucifixion and torture (nongraphic). Mention of attempted murder. Mention of past harm to an animal (nonfatal). Mentions of Goodsprings, Sunny Smiles, and others, as well. Implied murder (non-graphic) of an entire town. Skewed morality, even beyond what the Legion considers skewed. Hero worship, though the “hero” in question isn’t that at all. Implied, situational psychopathy. Origins-story of an implied future arch-villain. Intense wistfulness and fondness from several directions and in several directions.

**“. . . Love, which pardons no beloved from loving, took me so strongly with delight in him**

**That, as you see, it still abandons me not. . . .”**

**―Dante Alighieri, _Inferno: A New Verse Translation_**

* * *

 

At this rousing of the Paladin’s defenses and wariness, Fox chuckles, sardonic and self-mocking.

 

For a man who’d once known all the things to say, and all the appropriate times to say them—even up until he was assigned this mission, and the deal with the Raiders fell apart—Fox is dismayed by his ineptness at this particular time. By his easily foreseeable mishandling of words, and of the person whom he would ensnare and bind to himself with them.

 

Ironic, that the only such person with whom Fox has gone so far down . . . _whatever this is_ on which they seem to be embarking . . . is distrustful of and seemingly allergic to his brand of charm and eloquence. Or what passes for it, these days.

 

Though, upon re-consideration, Fox _fervently_ hopes that asking his proud and self-determined lover whether he’d been a virgin—immediately after the coitus that’d certainly put an end to _that_ state—is _not_ what passes for his best, _even in_ these latter days.

 

“Point taken, Paladin. Your sexual history is of no moment or concern to me, nor should it be. While I find the idea of your chastity . . . extremely arousing, it is both an unlikely and unrealistic possibility to entertain. Especially regarding a man of your caliber and beauty. I will place no weight or import on foolish hopes and preferences.” Fox kisses down the length of the Paladin’ flaccid prick to the head, licking, sucking, and mouthing it hungrily. Trying to coax from it the eager desire and ravening desperation he knows waits just below spent flesh and over-sensitized nerves. He hums under his breath, letting the vibrations build, until the resulting grunts and groans have become soft, helpless cries that are at least as much pain as pleasure.

 

“S-sorry!” the Paladin stutters and gulps, though it’s more of a husking croak than anything. “I . . . I was glib and d-dismissive. You asked—a s-sincere question. D-didn’t mean a-anything unkind about it. I reacted d-defensively. Without th-thinking. S-sorry.”

 

His ears and face burning for no reason, Fox merely doubles down on his attention to the Paladin’s pretty prick, willing it to _respond_ , to flush and harden, to _rise_ . . . to silence the Paladin’s mind and heart, conscience and character. At least for the next little while.

 

“Y-yes. You’re the _first_ , okay, c-corporal? The _only_. I n-never—it wasn’t a necessity. It w-was _controllable_ , until _y-yuh_ —” but the rest of the Paladin’s confession is lost to a long, low, furling groan as Fox’s fingers trail over his balls and just beyond. The Paladin bucks up hard, clearly needing those fingers to move lower, still.

 

But Fox’s hand has stilled utterly, and he’s shifted up and toward the Paladin’s handsome face and lust-distorted features. Fox is stymied and distracted—lost, of a sudden. The world seems to pitch and yaw and spin, disorienting him intensely, before settling once again, leaving him unable to catch his breath and slumping to a sprawl on the Paladin’s torso. Kept under that strong arm and bracketed between those gorgeously powerful thighs, he feels both safe and endangered, and dizzy from the mixture. . . .

 

By the time Fox regains some of his composure, the Paladin is clutching him _closest_ , brushing incredibly caring, concerned fingers up and down Fox’s shoulder and bicep. His face is pale and worried and guilty, for some reason.

 

“Inconsiderate, smart-mouthed defensiveness never did anyone a damned bit of good, ever,” he says, rueful, quiet, and regretful. “I’m so sorry, Corporal. And I apologize.”

 

“You . . . need not. You _do not_ owe me amends in the form of guilt and mortification,” Fox reassures the Paladin. His tension and frustration and exasperation—even with himself—melts away like mist in the morning sun, and the disorientation passes. “You are the least inconsiderate, most well-intentioned person I have ever known. And one of three people whose presences in my life I count and have counted as not merely preferable, but . . . necessary.”

 

The admission costs Fox nothing and everything, and all the amounts in-between those two absolutes. He neither knows nor is he able to quantify how he feels about the admission or its cost, and thus cannot form a plan of action, attack, or defense. He only knows that he does not regret voicing it and never will. And he would voice it again if given a chance. Daily, even.

 

He wants to grin, suddenly, but is not certain he should.

 

The Paladin’s gaze skitters away. “ _Necessary people_ are an unwise risk, corporal.”

 

“Unwise, yes. But far from unworthy, Paladin.”

 

The Paladin’s gaze drifts back to Fox’s, taking the long route but holding steady upon its arrival. Fox does not allow himself that grin, but he doesn’t have the inclination or reserves to fight a rather naked smile, free of all meaning other than an expression of his pleasure in this moment.

 

“I speak from experience. You are not _quite_ the first to . . . get under my skin, as you say. As many do, I once had a life in which such things as trust, affection, and love were safe enough indulgences. They came and went as the tides, though they mostly stayed if welcomed. Love was offered without much reservation or regret when I was very, very young. But when that life ended, I . . . it became necessary to put aside those ways, no matter how deeply graven in me by nature and nurture. When I was taken by the Legion, it became _necessary to unlearn_ trust and affection and love. To forget the taste and feel of them—the warmth and brightness of their presence. But I did. To remain sane and to adjust, I managed. To survive and _thrive_ , to be productive and purposeful. I drew a wall between my first life and the second one in the Legion. I resolved to _never_ look back over that barrier.

 

“I told myself I’d forgotten, Danse, and clung to that lie as a drowning man clings to driftwood. And, even now, a decade beyond the reconciling of my two previous lives, I still find that remembering and _recalling_ are two distinct beasts in this _third_ life.”

 

The Paladin’s arm around him tightens, the weight and pressure of his broad, rough palm between Fox’s tense shoulder-blades increasing substantially. His dark eyes are steady and soft, abyssal and safe. “How old were you when they . . . when they took you from your home?”

 

Fox’s mouth purses briefly, before smoothing, like the rest of his face, into placid expressionlessness. He lets his gaze drop to the Paladin’s mouth, still so kiss-swollen and battered-bitten from the heights of his ecstasy. “I was slightly older than four years. Not yet at the halfway mark of that year, according to my . . . my brother. According to our _mother_ who, in her despair, took her own life a decade before my brother and I were reunited.”

 

The Paladin is silent for long minutes, his one-armed embrace near-smothering and just right for all that.

 

“ _I am so sorry_ , Fox,” he finally says in a hoarse whisper that makes Fox look up again, too defenseless to be defensive. The Paladin’s face, however, dispels any wish for defenses or anything other than this bare honesty that seems to be winning for Fox what all his charm and eloquence clearly never could. “I—I don’t know if the person I was created to be ever had parents, or if I was always just a facsimile of a real boy. But I . . . I _have_ known love. And loss. The kind that eats away at you like acid for years and years. Maybe even for life.” A beat and a sigh. “I don’t know that it ever gets better, but sometimes, if we’re lucky, the bearing-up-under gets a bit . . . easier. Or at least it stops getting consistently more difficult.”

 

Fox smiles blandly, with tired, but sincere affection. “You are . . . far from comforting in this moment, Paladin.”

 

The Paladin flushes and glances away. “Sorry. I’ve . . . I’ve never been good at being human. Even when I thought I was one.”

 

After studying the Paladin’s conflicted, guilty face for more than a minute, Fox sighs and kisses the other man’s chest, lingering and tender over a strong, reassuring heartbeat.

 

“I meant no disparagement, Danse. And quite the opposite, I assure you. I despise lies and liars, no matter how comforting and sweet, well-meant or well-meaning,” Fox adds, unable to control the pursing of his lips and the slight furrowing of his brow. “ _Especially_ the ones that are well-meant and well-meaning, though my disapproval, in light of my own past, is . . . ironic.”

 

When the Paladin’s gaze meets his once more, Fox’s expression smooths, softens, settles. He even smiles a bit and his admiring hand forsakes the silky skin of the Paladin’s inner thigh for the fuzzy-soft of his beard and moleskin-soft of his cheek. It pleases Fox no end that the man leans into his touch with relief and no hesitation. “Recalling and experiencing . . . affection and love, for the first time in nearly two decades was, I believe to this day, the first warning-claxon of my approaching end with the Legion. I met a . . . kindred spirit in the Mojave Wasteland. A person for whom I felt and still feel endless respect, gratitude, and affinity, even if they have cooled and faded, by the creeping forgetfulness of distance and time.”

 

Another silence, less sad and more considering, holds sway before the Paladin ventures, reluctant and awkward: “Were you . . . _are you still_ in love with him?”

 

“ _Her_. And . . . even now, almost a decade later, I could not answer that question with any certainty.” Frowning, Fox focuses on the Paladin’s dark chest hair and how restful, but thrilling it is to run his fingers through it. The furry softness, combined with the hardness of the Paladin’s chest and the strong, unstoppable beat of his great heart is steadying and encouraging in a way nothing has ever been.

 

Whether that is providential or not, only time will tell.

 

“I was in awe of her. I wanted to _be_ her, I think. And had she been of a like mind, I would have lain with her, yes. She is the only woman about whom I have ever been, hmm, _curious_.” Fox’s chuckle is wry and only half-forced.

 

“How . . . _when_ did you realize you were in love with her?” The Paladin’s voice is still quiet and thoughtful, his embrace tight and keeping. Fox settles further into it, putting the fresh, aching need in his prick and balls aside, for the old and buried one in his chest.

 

“I knew the first—and only—time, at that point, that I had ever looked into another person’s eyes and saw myself staring right back at me. Not merely my own reflection, but a missing part of myself. My betterment . . . or, perhaps more accurately, a very specific sort of refinement,” Fox says, musing and amused. His next chuckle is more delighted than wry. “I was, of course, horrified, discomfited, disgusted, and utterly appalled. Awe-stricken and enamored. And—in those initial moments, at least—no man had ever loved woman more. . . .”

 

#

 

Nearly a year after the Hereditus incident, when the Courier’s fame with the Legion had grown large, indeed, Vulpes Inculta, head of the Legion’s frumentarii, had taken an idle moment to speak with the Courier after a major stealth-incursion. Her crucial intel and assistance had given the frumentarii the upper hand in clearing out a large and well-armed cadre of Powder Gangers.

 

Vulpes had—his final orders to his frumentarii regarding the victorious aftermath issued and carried-out—approached the Courier as she’d stared distractedly up at one Ganger bearing his cross in weak and near-silent delirium. All around them had been many dozens of such crosses planted like new trees: growing stronger and more seasoned by misery and the sun near the Mojave, rather than water and the nurturing Earth. Even as their bearers had grown weaker and weaker, after nearly a day of stress and exposure, the crosses had seemed to stand taller and prouder. Nobler.

 

Understandably, Vulpes Inculta had been flush with both victory and pride, at the heart of which had been his faith in Legion ideology and ethos.

 

Drawing even with the Courier and gazing up at the nearly-dead human refuse, Vulpes had decided to broach a subject about which he’d been curious for some time. He’d also, for once, decided to not dance around that subject. The Courier, though not averse to Vulpes’s charm, had also been immune to it and hadn’t appreciated it as a prelude to any serious discussion. She’d had no patience for what she’d called “sidlin’ up to what really matters.”

 

So, after a perfunctory and perfunctorily returned _Salve_ , he’d asked: “You risked Legion justice and the cross for your war-dog. Is she so special to you, then? So valuable and irreplaceable a commodity?”

 

Vulpes had not meant the enquiry as a means to ferret out the Courier’s weak-spots—few, though they had been; he’d genuinely been curious about her deep, immutable attachment to such an animal. The Courier, dubbed _*Nuncia Ferinae_ , by the Legion, had squinted up the foundering Powder Ganger twitching and whimpering on his cross. Her dark, sweaty-shining face had been as flat and lifeless and _bright_ as her eyes usually were. But her eyes had been possessed of a strange, matte-like glitter, as of hatred-imbued obsidian.

 

“Damn right she is, _Wool-PAYS_ ,” she’d said—as usual, distinctly dicing up the syllables of his name with a pointed break between them. As if they’d been two separate words, and the correct accent and emphasis actually belonged on the second syllable, rather than the first. At her feet, the dog, Cheyenne, had been dozing deeply in the midafternoon heat. “She’s all I got left of a damned good woman who didn’t love nothin’ in this world better than Miss Cheyenne, here.” This time, the flicker hadn’t been in the Courier’s onyx-glitter eyes, but across her stony, hatchet-severe face. “Powder Gangers came for her town a while back. I got intel they was gonna, and raced back to Goodsprings to rouse the cavalry. Cavalry. _Shit_. But for Sunny, Chet, Trudy, and even poor, crazy Doc Mitchell, and a _few_ others . . . none of them no-‘counts helped defend that town. _Their_ town.

 

“All them folks I just named died _fightin’_ , includin’ Miss Cheyenne’s favorite human: Sunny Smiles. Ain’t that a name? Heh, Sunny taught me how to shoot _right_ again, after the Doc patched _this_ as best he could.” The Courier had gestured dismissively at the livid scar and indentation above her left eyebrow . . . the infamous head-shot that hadn’t been enough to still her permanently.

 

Squinting up at the dying Powder Ganger, she’d grinned . . . hard and mean and feral. “I managed to get most of them Gangers Sunny and Chet and Trudy didn’t get. Woulda made Sunny proud. Real proud. Then, that was done, and eventually I got _everybody else_ , too.”

 

Vulpes had tilted his head in further curiosity and question, and the Courier had glanced at him with burning, intent eyes that truly drove home the concealing effectiveness of her usual flat affect. Her gaze had made him uncomfortable, and excited enough to look away from her and from the near-complete _recognition_ which resounded from within him.

 

She had—for quite some time, at that point—made his heart race and his soul _itch_. But never more than she had in _that_ burnt-bright, stark-flat moment.

 

“I got the rest of Goodsprings. The rats that hadn’t run for the hills or Primm, or lost themselves elsewhere. Those cowards let the best of Goodsprings die—let ‘em get cut down while they was _standin’ up and bein’ righteous for their home_. Standin’ up for a buncha craven-ass _neighbors_ , that didn’t lift a finger to do the same. They let _Sunny die_. I barely got Cheyenne to a doc in Primm that could save _her_. And then, I. . . .”

 

Vulpes had felt the Courier’s reflective, brimming-bright gaze shift away. Back to the unfortunate Powder Ganger, most likely. The Courier had never, in Vulpes’s experience, flinched at death: neither causing nor witnessing. “Cheyenne’s as tough and special as Sunny was. A fighter and a survivor. A protector. Those asshole-neighbors let all the _good_ in Goodsprings be slaughtered and didn’t do _nothin’_ to protect it. To save it. So, fuck ‘em. They hadda _pay_ for that. They couldn’t pay _enough_ , I reckon. But it’s done.”

 

“Ah,” Vulpes had replied, nodding and almost breathless. This had been more than the Courier had ever said to or around him, full-stop; never mind in one statement. In that moment, he’d found her more fascinating, challenging, beautiful, and terrible— _frightening_ than ever he had. “I see. But you . . . might have simply let the Powder Gangers have the faithless cowards, after all, Courier. Let _them_ carry out your vengeance.”

 

“Yeah,” she’d replied, her tone dismissive and free of regrets or remorse. “Yeah, I mighta. But I didn’t. _Wouldn’t_. I had a message to deliver. A personal one. I wasn’t about to fetch-up yellow or delegate. It’s done.”

 

Vulpes had known she was grinning, then . . . big and sharp. The Courier had been nothing, if not certain beyond all regrets, or remorse. Or other extant reasoning. And _Vulpes_ had never felt closer to or more disturbed by another human being in all his life.

 

The sensation had been heady and rather overwhelming, in the moment. Almost to the point of sexual arousal.

 

And as for the Courier’s rationale . . . _it’s done,_ had been her final word on the matter, and that had been that. The tale of another message delivered by this lawless, unpredictable _*Nuncia Ferinae_ —quietly mad and possessed of a uniquely skewed but _rigidly_ ethical code—to a town full of now-dead profligates and traitors.

 

Soon, Vulpes, too, had been beaming up at the expiring Powder Ganger. The man’s involuntary functions had shortly reached a point of distress and catastrophic failure, and he’d started convulsing. And choking on the fluid filling his lungs—most likely blood.

 

His cheerful smile affixed by utter satisfaction and the routine rightness of the only life and world left to him, Vulpes Inculta had been both thrilled and reassured. _Content_ to exist in tandem with and at the side of the most broken, inhuman, gut-level kindred yet ineffably _alien_ person he would surely ever meet.

 

Except, of course, for every time he would catch his own face smirking or sneering back at him from any reflective surface.

 

#

 

“That was a most delightfully productive and satisfying afternoon. Very fine, indeed,” Fox ends his recall and remembrance wistfully. He feels inexplicably cheered and demonstratively fond—more than half-hard and desirous of making use of the state.

 

He glances up at the Paladin, beaming-beaming-beaming, even as the other man looks devastated and stricken. Fox tuts, leaning up to steal a tender, lingering kiss as he teases, tantalizes, then fingers the Paladin open again less than delicately—no dire chore, that, even if the Paladin’s body had not also been as obviously desirous as Fox’s.

 

As it is, this not-quite-impromptu seduction is intense and efficient, and before Fox knows it, he’s pushing into the throbbing-tight heat of the Paladin’s ready, grateful body—this time, with the aid of generous lubrication. He takes the Paladin—his _lover_ , his . . . _his_ —with one hard, ungentle thrust that makes the other man yowl and clutch at him desperately, babbling pleas and nonsense and praise.

 

It isn’t until midmorning that both men are done: sore, exhausted, and deeply unconscious in a tangled sprawl. With Fox atop the Paladin and still half-inside him, his face resting over the Paladin’s heartbeat and the Paladin clutching him close, face buried in Fox’s hair.

 

They’re dead to the passage of time, to the barely leavened chill of day . . . to the world.

 

To everything that isn’t an uncommon lack of restlessness and loneliness. To everything that isn’t each other and this brief, rare restorative span.

 

* * *

 

 **Translations** :

***Ferocious Messenger**


	13. OKAY, COMPUTER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A not-easy, but much-needed discussion of intentions, expectations, and hopes. Of wants and needs. Of what is acceptable and what is not. A declaration or two—gauntlets thrown down, and gauntlets picked up. Consuming flame is _**CONSUMING AF**_ and hopeful ending is _**HOPEFUL AF**_.
> 
> Plus, _Paladin Danse swears . . . more than once!_
> 
> Oh, and some more sex: because you don’t mess with a classic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes/Warnings: Angst, miscommunication, frustration, honesty, plain-speaking, and relationship—such as it is—negotiations. Also, kissing and touching, anal fingering and anal sex, Dom/sub and implied rough sex.

**“In that book which is my memory,**

**On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you,**

**Appear the words,**

**‘Here begins a new life.’”―Dante Alighieri, _Vita Nuova_**

* * *

 

“You meant for us to make an early start today, Paladin. We . . . have been less than successful in achieving that goal.”

 

Danse, barely certain he’s even awake—and he has no idea how the corporal knows he is, as he hasn’t yet taken a single deeper breath to transition from sleeping-shallow to purposeful-awake—shivers and gasps, both prolonged as the corporal’s lips move lightly against the skin of his throat. The smaller man’s body, half-on-top of Danse’s on the right side, is a pleasantly anchoring weight, perfect for how non-negligible and solid it is.

 

Corporal Fox is compact, yes, but sturdily built and muscular: all fortitude, deceptive grace, and agile-clever strength. And the hoist and heft of him—the warp and weft, too—have come to constitute the truest baseline of a reality Danse can no longer bring himself to question.

 

This is no illusion, but _reality_. Danse has never experienced a dream, anyway, and so he _must_ be wide awake.

 

His breathing finally settles somewhere between asleep and startled-awake. Then he sighs and squints his eyes open, his right arm tightening around the corporal’s waist. Decidedly westering sunlight, pale-gold and just enough to mitigate the fall chill (along with Danse’s reactor-like body-heat), greets his eyes with unusual kindness. The sky from which that sun shines is also a paler blue—more so than is common for the season and weather. A squadron of small, dark birds in a perfect “V” formation wheel and dart overhead, silent and precise.

 

Corporal Fox is hard against Danse’s hip, though seemingly in no rush to attend to that. And Danse, himself, is hard, too—no surprise if, as he estimates, he’s been asleep for nearly seven hours.

 

He’s never slept for seven consecutive hours in his remembered life.

 

He feels oddly _well_. Not exhausted, or tired—not even particularly sleepy. The energy that flows just under his skin isn’t wired or a second-wind rallying . . . it feels abundant and ready. His body feels recharged, somehow. Renewed.

 

The corporal’s breath and lips are still soft and restful against his throat, and the mussed-wild floof of his dark hair is a quirky-endearing tickle along the underside of Danse’s jaw and his neck.

 

“Did Nate specify the need for an urgent reply? Or did you infer one from his tone?” Danse rumbles then yawns, wide and long. Corporal Fox chuckles.

 

“The commander can, indeed, be a rather . . . dramatic and impatient man. However, I did not infer more drama and impatience behind this request than usual. Less, actually . . . which I marked as unusual, but I did not pause to speculate,” the corporal murmurs on the back of a soft, but gusting sigh that makes Danse shiver. He sounds both amused and suspicious.

 

Danse frowns, suddenly and _once again_ one of those things, himself. Melodramatic and hasty Nate may be, but he’s crafty and fond of plotting. Possessed of both wideness of scope _and_ the instinct for when to buckle-under and micromanage his schemes. For such a dramatic and impatient man, Nathaniel Jordan is surprisingly adept at out-thinking and out-waiting obstacles to his desired outcomes. Under his energy and fire to **move-be-do** , is a devious, lizard-cold core of methodology and detailed structuring.

 

Nate is impulsive, but he can also play the long-game better than anyone Danse has ever known and, all things considered, that’s not unfitting.

 

The corporal’s clever right hand leaves its perch on the point of Danse’s hip, to grasp Danse’s cock in a loose, almost timid hold. Which becomes a hesitant, wistful stroke that’s just enough to shift foreskin and elicit a soundless groan and anticipation from Danse . . . and little else. It’s a tease that seems so perfectly calibrated, Danse is entirely certain the calibration is coincidental. Especially when the corporal’s hand falters in rhythm and strength, then lets go. Drifts away to brush down the left side of Danse’s abdomen.

 

But even the simple caress of callused fingertips over sensitive skin and excited-jumping muscles is sweet and torturous.

 

“What reply will you take the Commander, Paladin Danse?” Corporal Fox asks, sounding relaxed and mildly interested. But his body is tense-hot-hard on Danse’s. “Yesterday morning, you declared that you would take that reply in person. Not necessarily an _affirmative_ reply, as such. One can easily imagine a man of your character not leaving the dashing of his closest friend’s hopes to the impersonal recitation of a messenger such as I.”

 

“ _Impersonal recitation_?” Danse snorts, his arm around the corporal’s waist tightening further. The corporal doesn’t hesitate to somehow cleave closer.

 

“Relatively speaking, of course. Not as personal a delivery as . . . an _in-person delivery_ , yes? At any rate, whatever your answer, it would be entirely in-character—what I know of your character so far—to take the duty of a such a response very seriously. To accept the commander’s invitation or refuse it to his face,” Corporal Fox concludes, still mild but gone grave and almost brooding. “May I . . . enquire as to your intentions?”

 

“With regard to Nate, or to you? Or to both of you?” Danse fires back and the corporal’s body tenses further, his admiring fingers stilling just below Danse’s ribs.

 

“If you find my query offensive and irksome, I respectfully apologize for my presumption. For overstepping the bounds of our . . . tacitly established dynamic.”

 

The corporal’s tone is as smooth and chink-free as a wall of opaque glass, but his formerly tense body is fluid-loose in a way that means Fox is about to shift. Move. Move _away_.

 

Walk away.

 

Indeed, after a few moments, Danse has to clutch the corporal tighter and closer than ever, simply to keep him.

 

“Our _tacitly established dynamic_ so far seems to be comprised of _you_ wanting, hoping, and expecting certain words and behaviors from me, and expressing that desire in the most ambiguous, unsettling fashion possible. Then I get confused and angry and paranoid that you’re stringing me along for some sneaky, fox-rat reason, or simply mocking me. I snap at you and you pull away . . . wounded, glib, or self-martyring. Or all three. I grudgingly fumble my way through a crazy cauldron of feelings for which _you_ are the _catalyst and focus_ , warily apologize for my inexperience with human emotions and my quick temper, and wait as best I can for the reasons and explanation behind your behavior and words. We struggle to be mutually patient and empathetic, and eventually reach a weird, uneven sort of armistice that largely involves us making each other come frequently and spectacularly. Then we start the whole cycle again before the afterglow has a chance to fade.” Danse snorts again and under his arm, Corporal Fox is tense and wary, once more. “Does that about sum up our _dynamic_?”

 

For once, the corporal seems shocked non-verbal by something that isn’t Danse’s hand on his cock or Danse’s tongue up his ass.

 

“That desired outcome of yours, regarding me,” Danse begins, low and slow and careful. “You want more from me than just a willing body, and the thrill of having someone to take control of. You want . . . the safety of doing those things with someone you can trust not to do you wrong or use your needs and preferences—and I don’t just mean the sexual ones—as leverage against you in the future. You want someone you can maybe . . . hand control off _to_ , at some point.”

 

“Is bare honesty _truly_ what _you_ desire of _me_ in this moment, Paladin Danse? Be certain that it is, for I will not be solely culpable in your . . . dissatisfaction and disillusionment, should you traverse territory you have been warned was unpleasant at best. And very likely treacherous.” Fox’s caveat is terse, stiff, and gritted through clenched teeth and jaw.

 

“What makes you think you can get these things you want—safety, trustworthiness . . . tenderness—from someone you’ve just met? From some _thing_ that isn’t even human?” Danse forges on as if Fox hasn’t spoken, his fingers curling into a near fist at the small of Fox’s back. “I’m not a man, corporal, no matter how I’ve been programmed to act and respond. _I’m not human_. I’m a cyborg, if one is feeling generous about labels. But really, I’m just a fucking robot, wrapped in organic flesh and decorated with flimsy, barebones memories of a human life. Is _that_ what you want to trust with your. . . .” Danse can’t quite bring himself to say _heart_.

 

The idea of holding the _corporal’s heart_ —spikes and bitterness, darkness and twists, and all its other engrained defenses and self-defeats—even in some nebulous maybe-future is both tempting and terrifying. And. . . .

 

. . . and Danse _wants_ that heart and that _future_ more than he’s wanted anything since right after finding out he wasn’t human.

 

But even the maddest, most desperate fox-rat corporal would sooner, rather than later, regret putting his heart in the hands of a useless, discarded—probably outmoded—machine. And Fox is surely both those things, mad and desperate, but he’s not stupid. Not a glutton for punishment—at least not for _that sort_ of punishment.

 

“Do you suppose that the particulars of your biology and memories matter to me, Paladin Danse—in a fashion that would sway my interest _away_ from you?” Fox sits up a little, bearing some of his weight on his hand and sliding a little off Danse as he does. His gaze smolders at and chills Danse, and his dark-floof hair is ridiculous—laughable—though Danse doesn’t find _anything_ humorous at this moment. Like everything else, Corporal Fox’s ridiculous fluff is just another small timebomb . . . waiting to detonate from his memory at some later date on which he is, as he suspects he _always_ will be, alone.

 

And at that future detonation, even as he remembers the texture and scent of the corporal’s ridiculous hair, the tear-ducts he’s been given will leak as if _they_ , at least, have forgotten that Danse isn’t and maybe never was human. His frequently asked: _Why do I_ cry? will have changed in its emphasis to: Why _do I cry_?

 

Rendering the entire question bitterly rhetorical, in the wake of crystal-clear, soft-edged memories of silly-fluffy, kicked-rooster hair tickling his neck.

 

That smolder-chill increases and Fox leans down, until his face is so close to Danse’s that they share breath. Their noses brush. Fox’s gaze is a sharp, ice-blue smear. “Your synth physiology is a part of who you are, yes. Part of what makes you so . . . desirable and magnificent to me. Thus, I am attracted and drawn to _that_ particular, too. But nothing in your biology is off-putting or deleterious to your tangible or intangible beauty.”

 

Danse’s jaw tenses so sudden and tight, the hinges instantly ache and complain. “Everyone has their kinks, I guess. But I’m not signing up as fuel for your synth-fetish _or_ for Nate’s crusade to _save the everything,_ just because you and I . . . because of _this_. . . .” looking away from Fox, Danse gestures absently at their bodies. They’re both still hard, Danse’s body all but saluting his abdomen in its eagerness for _Fox’s body_ back on top of it, in it, and completing it. “I’m lonely. Desperate, even. I won’t lie. But even I have some pride left. I’m not interested in just being a robo-hole for you to get off in. Or a robo- _dick_ for you to get off _on_.”

 

Fox huffs a weary, frustrated laugh, then leans his forehead against Danse’s, his lips pressing incidental kisses as he whispers. “I _do not fetishize you_ , Paladin Danse. Not because you are a synth nor for any other reasons. You are the most _human_ human being I have ever met, and you make this . . . overabundance of human sensibility under which you labor and struggle not merely admirable, but attractive and poignant. _Beautiful_. _You_ are beautiful and _human_ , and I want every atom of _you_. That desire is not for a _type of man_ , but for _you_. There is only _one_ you. And I would have that one be mine, alone. To have and to _keep_.”

 

In the charged, waiting silence that follows this declaration, Danse can only blink and gape. Shiver and gulp down oxygen that immediately comes whooshing back out. “Fox— _Corporal_ —” he finally manages, only for Fox to claim his mouth and any other words trembling on his lips, in a hard, hungry kiss that feels like flying . . . like drowning.

 

“ _I like you_ , Paladin Danse. Is that plain-spoken enough for you—homespun and _honest_ enough? _I want you and I need you, and I would both have and keep you_ ,” Fox growls between kisses and urgent-vicious nips of Danse’s lips and tongue. Near-bites that probably leave welts and almost draw blood. “I do not need a man who is _like you_. There _is no one_ like you. You . . . are an ideal and a dream made flesh. You are the reach for perfection, if not yet the grasp. My desire _and_ need for you alarms and frightens me—humbles and devastates every atom of _me_. Yet still . . . I _like_ you, Danse. I like you.”

 

Shortly, the biting kisses gentle into intimate stillness, with Fox pressing their faces together so closely, all they can do is huff and pant breaths into and out of each other’s mouths. So, Danse takes a deep, shaking breath in and speaks on the exhale, rather curious and anxious about what he means to say.

 

“You’re like a barrel of high octane that’s been dumped on me. No matter how much I try—” he laughs, too, ragged, and more than a little chagrined and despairing. “No matter how much I _would try_ , were I even a little inclined to, I wouldn’t be able to get you off my skin and out of my pores. Not entirely. And even knowing that the slightest spark is going to light me up and _cook me_ until I’m ashes, you . . . make me eager, impatient, and _desperate_ to burn. To be consumed.”

 

Fox moans, soft and pained, shifting his body so that it’s on top of Danse’s once more. Once he’s sprawled like a living blanket, he kisses Danse with startling sweetness and affection. “And I _already_ burn, Paladin. Happily. But it would be . . . my preference to have you join me in the flames. _You_ , and no other.”

 

Another charged and hopeful—expectant—silence stretches between them for long enough that Fox sits up a little more to make eye-contact. Danse holds that gaze and is rocked to his core by it. By his own motivations, needs, and this first inkling of recognition and comprehension . . . and not just of Corporal Fox.

 

Holding tight to this knowledge, self-knowledge, and insight—and to this window into both their workings . . . their machinations and reasonings—Danse nods once, taking another deep breath. But this one is steady and calm, and it emerges from him in the same state.

 

“I guess . . . I guess if you’re willing to burn _with me_ . . . that’s not so bad, then,” he decides, and smiles, small and anxious. Fox returns that smile with a grin, wide and voracious.

 

Bright and dark.

 

"*Hope never to see heaven, Paladin. For _I_ have come to lead you to the _other_ shore; into eternal darkness; into _fire . . ._ and ice,” he leans down to hiss in Danse’s ear after shifting firmly back on top of him. Then he licks the lobe and latches on with sharp-willful teeth. Danse grunts, groans, and shudders, his hands splaying and clenching repeatedly on Fox’s hips and ass, desperate to take and have and keep. Though, mostly that third one.

 

“ _Whahhh? What_?” he gasps, complying with and assisting Fox by pushing his left leg up and out of the way. The moment after that’s achieved to Fox’s satisfaction, his index and middle fingers brush Danse’s slightly parted lips—Fox, himself, smirks when Danse’s eyebrows shoot up at this purposeful foregoing of the corporal’s long-since retrieved and somewhere-nearby lube.

 

Then, they’re both moaning as Fox’s fingers push into the warm, _welcoming_ haven of Danse’s mouth. Fox hisses again, when Danse teases and wets those fingers with singular dedication, then laughs: high, breathless, and _happy_. And maybe more than a little mad, but that, too, isn’t _so_ bad.

 

“You will find that—among other things—I am a storehouse of classical references, which bear only vague import for the moment in which I utter them,” Fox replies, winded and shaky as he pulls his fingers free. _Half_ a moment after that, Danse is groaning, tensing, shuddering, then relaxing. Clenching and keeping Fox’s fingers as they push steadily into him—relentless and forceful in their need to be core-deep and beyond. To be _deepest_ and take _all_.

 

Fox’s lips are heated and teasing, tender and reverent on Danse’s own, his tongue lapping at Danse’s lips and tongue. Stealing exhalations and gasps, whimpers and cries alike.

 

“We will burn, Danse. Bright and hot and _fierce_ ,” he promises in a voice gone rough as gravel and as smooth as pre-War manners. “ _We will burn_ . . . and together, be consumed.”

 

#

 

**“Do not be afraid; our fate**

**Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.”**

**―Dante Alighieri, Inferno**

 

END

 

* * *

 

***** **Paraphrased from Dante Alighieri’s _Inferno_ :**

_“Hope not ever to see Heaven._

_I have come to lead you to the other shore;_

_Into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More credits and thanks added to end notes of the Entire Work. Thanks for reading and commenting, and for letting me play in the Fallout sandbox :-)

**Author's Note:**

> **THANKS :**
> 
> Thanks _especially_ to [Ghostofshe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostofshe), [who writes the best Vulpes Inculta you need to be reading](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8285711). And for _fox rat_ , Woolpays, the _Inferno_ -connection and a gajillion other amazing bits and bobs, molehills and mountains that are all the reasons why my Vulpes might rock, and none of the reasons he might suck.
> 
> Thanks, also, to [Littleleotas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleleotas/pseuds/littleleotas) and [thegrumblingirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl). Also, thanks to the entire Writer’s Block, as always. You complete me _and_ you had me at “hello.”
> 
> **Credits/Sources :**
> 
> ****
> 
> [Fallout Wikia](http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/). All mistakes and suckiness are the author’s doing, and not the fault of the Wikia or of the friends and fandom aficionados who were gracious enough to offer concrit and feedback. 
> 
> [Dante Alighieri Quotes on GoodReads](https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5031312.Dante_Alighieri)
> 
> **Powered by:**  
>  Radiohead: [OK Computer](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkSTq_iV1ZIAX-TtjbjNY7YRHD7ULqYC9)
> 
> [Bug makes the Tumbles](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr-com)!


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